'iS;Vr^',i;'''"4iT'>:^^s?ri.,-y- --. , - 







\ii!i%felfe 




This small Volume is 

DEDICATED 

To THE Insistent Demands of Humanity Abroad in the World for 

UNIVERSAL OPPORTUNITY TO ACQUIRE USEFUL KNOWLEDGE ; 

Affectionately to the Memory of My Devoted Teachers as 

Distinguished Original Investigators in Science: 

Doctors B. G. Wilder, James Law, and Professors W. R. Dudley, 

William Anthony, Henry Comstock, George Caldv/ell, Samuel Williams. 

Simon Gage, and I. P. Roberts, of Cornell UNivERsrrY: 

AND ALSO 

To Our Staunch Friends of Educational Efficiency and Freedom 

SUCH AS 

Woodrow Wilson, Andrew D. White, and Charles H. Elliot 
University Ex-Presidents 

AND 

Professors, Lester F. Ward, E. A. Ross, F. M. Leavitt, E. Davenport, 

Arland D. Weeks, Elmer H. Fish, H. Schneider, F. G. Bonser, 

Irving King, also Wm.R. George and 

Doctor F. B. VanNuys. 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



RATIONAL TRAINING 

BY 

THE SCHOOL TOWN SYSTEM 
WITHOUT TAXATION 



THOMAS L. BRUNK, B.S., M.D. 

AUTHOR OF 

THE FOUNDING OF GOVERNMENT 

BULWARKS OF INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT 

THE GREATEST HUMAN TRAGEDY 

OUR COLONIAL INHERITANCE 

SECTARIANISM, ETC. 



FIRST EDITION 



PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
FROM THE PRESS OF 

THE ALTON PRINTING HOUSE 

ALTON, ILLINOIS, U.S.A. 
1919 



COPYRIGHTED BY 

THE AUTHOR 

1919 






m 23 1919 
©CI:A51222J 



FOREWORD 

No longer is the Paid-Student Industrial Training School 
an experiment. Kolonger are we in doubt about its need and 
feasibility. No longer can the big world of production wait for 
it to become the prevailing type of school to prepare the mill- 
ions of our near-adults who now leave our school's to earn a liv- 
ing before they are trained to do anything b\it non-advancing 
jobs. 

In 1906 a report to the National Association of Manufactur- 
ers by a Committee on Industrial Education, they said: 

"Technical and trade schools should have opportunites 
for teaching their students all the phases of practical work 
by producing manufacturers of various kinds, and in addi- 
tion may be jplaced on sale to the general public." 

This same report also said that the initiative to start such 
schools should be taken by corporations or individual mill own- 
ers. 

From this and many other evidences as shown in this small 
volume, we conclude that the manufacturer, the miner, the lum- 
berman, the structural engineer, the building-trades employer, 
managers of railroads, steamship, telegraph and telephone oom- 
panies, and, in fact, men of affairs in general have little or no say 
as to how our public schools-shall be managed, what they shall 
teach, how they shall be equipped, or how they shall be correlat- 
ed with industry. In fact but few of our Producers, either em- 
ployers or employees, havelittle or no say-so about them, because 
of the local and state inc-ompetent and political Control over 
them. Sectarianism and Politics have more to do witli our 
schools than Industrialism. Lawyers and Clergymen have more 
to say than Manufacturers and employers of labor. Mrs. Donoth- 
ing in her mansion has more influence over them than the big 
Trades or Union Labor. In fact they are run by Influence and 
not by Science and Masters of Trade and Production. 

Our System will not change itself. All change must come 
from without by voluntary organization. Therefore, if we want 
and must have Vocational training for the.millions now thrown 
upon the industrial market with empty brains aud helpless hands, 
the big men of Production and Distribution must get behind an 
educational enterprise that will tit our youth for the work of the 
world and fill our industries with fully equipped labor. And 
this educational triumph must be founded upon such Principles 
as shall make it impossible for the Control to fall into the hands 



of the non-producing classes. The professional and clerical class- 
es know very little about our large productional requirements. 
Why then should they virtually rule our schools? 

It is the purpose of this modest booklet to present briefly 
the failures of our present school system, the Order of Nature to 
rationalize all schools, theProgram of action to initiate a Suppli- 
mentary System based on nature and biological principles, and 
the fundamental Democratic Control that will give every indus- 
try and calling its full weight in the Councils of our most essen- 
tial and instinctive social work — the education of our children 
for a definite work-a-day purpose in an environment of nat- 
ural freedom, 

It is assumed that the writer is far from being alone in his 
conceptions of the basic educational institution herein outlined. 
There are many who have similar views and convictions but have 
found no place nor the time to express them. It is to these we 
are making an appeal to get into touch with the International 
University Association, become members by simply subscribing 
to the Principles given in Chapter 3, and help witii their might 
and main to push along this most urgent work to a full realiza- 
tion. 

If this truth-seeking, civic and manual-training work can 
thus grow on the soil of democracy, it will bear the fruits of de- 
mocracy. That is to say, it will be as non-partisan, non-sectari- 
an and non-exclusive as the Social Center of Wisconsin and 
other states, and we can hope with confidence that it will ma- 
ture a priceless transformation in our whole social mechanism. 
Alton, III. T. L. B. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 1 

EDUCATIONAL DEMANDS AND CONTROL 

The Paramount Issue is Educational Control. 
Education without Representation. 
Corporation and Sectarian School still Rules. 
Teachers' Mouths and Science Muzzled. 
CHAPTER 2 
THE PRESENT SCHOOL SYSTEM 
ITS FAILURE, INADEQUACY AND INEFFICIENCY 
Order of Nature in Education. 
Order of Nature Found in Science, 
Primary End of Education. 

Lowest and most Dangerous Class, Society should Educate. 
Is Our School Plant FitV Buildings for Confinement M? thod. 
Our Text-Book Medley and our Apparatus Junk. 
Training Schools for "GeJitlemen". 
The "Try-Out" System. 
Our School System Inelastic. 
Evils our System Fails to Correct. 

Faulty Education gives Government Control to Drones. 
Our Schools Encourage Dissipation and Idling. 
Cleavage and Class Feeling Engendered. 
The Paramount Deception. 

CHAPTER 3 

SCOPE, PRINCIPLES xiND BIOLOGICAL 
BASIS FOR A NATURAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 
New World-View Demand of Education. 
Foundation Principles of a Rational System. 
Natural versus Artificial Law in Education. 
We must Abandon AGE Absurdities. 
Demands for Segregation at the Age of Puberty. 
CHAPTER 4 
EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS FORESHADOWING 
THE NEW SYSTEM 
The Correspondence School. 
Trade Schools. 

Trade Schools on Part-Time System. 
Continuation Schools. 
Evening Schools. 
Gary Indiana School Plan. 
The BIG Omission. 
The Junior Republic. - 



CHAPTER 5 

SCHOOL TOWN SYSTEM WITHOUT TAXATION 

School Town to Rationalize Education. 

A Miniature Democracy. 

Natural Adjustment of the Sexes, 

Education witliout Taxation, 

Higli Scliools xlbolished. 

How Financed and Founded. 

Ownersliip and Control of tliese School Properties. 

University Spirit Fostered by tlie School Town. 

Correlation of Industry and Labor. 

Education by Association. 

Fitting Personalities to tlieir Life's Work. 

Fitting Work to Labor. 

Spontineity and Inventiveness. 

Unlinished Mentalities. 

Teachers not Bosses but Employers. 

Preparing Teachers for Life's Work. 

Text Books. 

Riglits of Student-Citizens. 

Qualitioations and Age of Students. 

School Never Closed. 

Schedule. 

Public Medical Aid 

Discipline. 

Altogether Era Dawning. 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



CHAPTER 1 

EDUCATIONAL DEMANDS AND CONTROL 

Education is not a preparation for life — it is Life itself. 
And since Life is composed of two inseparable, elemental 
types of knowledge, the one used to support life, the other 
how to use it for the greatest social service, we are led to 
the conclusion that every man needs two educations, one 
that will fit him to work and another that will fit him to 
live. Then a properly educated man or woman is one who 
is trained both vocationally and liberally. The ditcher 
will not ditch all his waking hours. What will he think 
about when not in the ditch? It should be of deep con- 
cern to educators, as Davenport says*, that, 

"The mind is an unruly member, and if a man 
has no training beyond his vocation, his intellect 
is at sea, without chart, compass, or rudder, and 
the human mind adrift is a dangerous engine of 
destruction. ' ' 
Therefore, in the consideration of Education in all its 
bearings upon human welfare, we must always remember 
that we are dealing with a Man as well as a Craftsman, 
a Civilian as well as a Producer, a Thinker as well as a 
pair of Hands. To succeed in any calling, specific knowl- 
edge related directly to that calling is required. Then 
also at the same time, to be safe and happy, both general 
and civic training are imperative. 

THE PARAMOUNT ISSUE IS EDUCATIONAL 
CONTROL 

With our coming to realize that the traditional vicAv of 
education as an avenue to a Life of Ease is far from true, 
but on the contrary that it is no relief from drudgery or 
labor except as it enables us to utilize mechanical energ-y 
and to give us a more economic and intelligent direction 
to human effort, there is an irrepressible demand that our 

*F:ducation for Efficiency. By E. Davenport. 



NATURAL EnUCATION 



educational facilities be readjusted and brought under 
such a control so as to give to every human being not only 
greater powers to conquer nature, but also greater powers 
to adjust human affairs equitably and in accord with the 
unyielding laws of nature. 

Never in the history of Education has the demand be- 
come so insistent as at present that the recruits to fill up 
the ranks for the industrial battles of life shall be equip- 
ped mentally and manually to step at once from school to 
mine, shop, field or counting-room, ready to do and as- 
s'ume responsibility. And along with this there has never 
been such a pressing demand that there shall be Educa- 
tional Freedom — freedom from mental, religious, political 
and financial exploitation at the hands of those who have 
assumed authority to control the destinies of men. Our 
children demand freedom from arbitrary authority and 
that they become independent of the bounty and repress- 
ing rules of parent or school-board. 

This age demands Universal Education, Universal Use- 
fulness, and the conservation of all material and human 
energy. The demand for the saving of our exploited nat- 
ural resources is exceeded only by the imperative demand 
that we stop the awful drainage and waste of our vital 
resources. The desitructive fires of educational wrongs is 
greater than those laying waste thousands of acres of val- 
uable forests and millions of value in buildings. 

' Then, too, the unjust waste of our wealth by the few 
who profit by our system of education and industry is 
causing such a universal protest that we are almost in a 
state of revolt against the drone and social parasite. "Let 
Everybody Work" is becoming our national injunction. 
We are learning that Life means Action, and he who at- 
tempts to live upon the sweat of other men's brows is 
accounted a social deadweight and a menace to hmnan 
progress. And this revolt is growing more insistent that 
the control of our much lauded Educational System shall 
be liberated from politics and sectarianism, from local 
favoritism and incompetent, useless boards, from exploita- 



WrrHOUT TAXATION 



tion by profiteers, from fattening contractors and do-noth- 
ing sinecures, from local whims and fancies by self-ap- 
pointed neighborhood "magnates." 

EDUCATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION 

So complete is the control of our Schools that the plain 
people are not represented in the deliberations over their 
management or over what they shall teach or how they 
shall be built to meet the demands of our general wel- 
fare. Like the fashion-plates from Paris, the plates to 
fashion the minds of our children are also designed by the 
"proper authority" and deftly slipped into our "splendid 
free-school system" so that these children may become 
"responsive to the common instituional demands which 
rest upon men in general. ' ' There is no denying the fact 
that our educational system is not FREE in any sense of 
the word. And our leading and advanced writers are 
saying things. Professor Mead of Chicago University 
says* : 

"To a large extent the educational policy of 
most of our large cities has represented a fluctu- 
ating compromise between forces that have been 
by no means all educational forces. The school- 
teacher and politician have been standing sub- 
jects for the wit of humorous papers." 
Lester F. Ward saysf : 

"Both public and private educational institu- 
tions have always been and still remain chaotic. 
False notions prevail as to what yiueation is and 
is for. The moment a step is made beyond the 
rudiments, all object seems to be lost sight of, 
method is abandoned, organization is not thot 
of, and a mass of purposeless and useless rubbish 
is forced upon the learner." 
When we take a square look into our much-controlled 
system we find that the Text-books are milled by school- 
book monopolists, all of whom are "vested-interest protec- 

♦BuIleLin No. 14, 1914 U. S. Bureau of Education. 
tApplied Sociology. By Lester F. Ward. 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



tionists" ; that every little jerk-water town has its "Board 
of Education" clothed with the legal robes of authority 
to "sit" on such text-books as they in their "wisdom" 
may choose, and also pass upon the dove-like harmless- 
ness and the social and political incompetence of the per- 
sons who are to mould the future citizenship of their com- 
munity. This same Board with its dictatorial powers often 
fatten upon book, building and apparatus contracts, and 
sanctions and gives moral support to the efforts of sec- 
tarian groups to dominate their acts and also the imagina- 
tion and thots of our youth. Thru this local domination, 
our children are taught to venerate and revere the very 
institutions that are enslaving them and, too, in the face 
of the protests of a large majority of our citizenship. 

THE CORPORATION AND SECTARIAN SCHOOL 
STILL RULES 

In a Report of the Educational Bureau at Washington 
for 1912, we find that out of 602 universities, colleges and 
technical schools which reported to the Bureau for that 
year, 89 were under the control of the State while 513 
were under sectarian or corporate control. While the uni- 
versities had the largest individual attendance, yet the 
total attendance at all the State schools as compared with 
all the sectarian and corporate schools was as about one 
to five. Since but about two to three per cent of the 
student bodies of our universities and State colleges are 
females, and since ninety per cent of our common school 
teachers are women who have under their instruction and 
influence eighty-five per cent of all pupiLs who never at- 
tend any high or collegiate school, it follows, that our 
teachers get their higher education largely from sectarian 
and corporate schools, and that an immense majority of 
our children enter life with their minds clouded, confused 
and bewildered by the ERROR that filters down from 
dominated college to teacher and without question from 
teacher to pupil. 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



To the young inquiring mind, the world is full of mys- 
teries. For each it demands a CAUSE, and since for 
many, especially in the Biological field, the teacher cpn- 
not assign a true cause, the insistent, growing mind must 
be satisfied with a false one. And a false reason once 
fixed in the child-mind by an authority he does not doubt, 
it takes hard study and often the remainder of his life in 
an artificial environment to effect a change, at least for 
some of vital consequences affecting the renouncement of 
friends and beliefs fonning the very tap roots to his very 
■existence. 

Many of our leading educators realize the power of this 
insidious control and in recent years have offered some 
strong protests. One made at the 1914 meeting of the 
National Educational Association by Superintendent J. H. 
Francis of Los Angeles is a notable instance. He said : 
"Every child has the right to FREEDOM in 
the pursuit of his normal development — freedom 
from mental, religious, political and financial ex- 
ploitation at the hands of those stronger than 
himself." 
To the mind of the writer this is the most laconic as 
well as the most comprehensive declaration of Educa- 
tional Freedom ever uttered, and one, too, which the 
American and other peoples must endorse and follow if 
we are to get rid of the control of that element of society 
who wish to live without labor. 

TEACHERS' MOUTHS AND SCIENCE MUZZLED 

So long as Error enslaves and gives control over labor, 
so long will those desiring this control protest against the 
teaching of Truth. Error has been commercialized and 
capitalized and the resulting ignorance in economics and 
in Causation as applied to social welfare has been and is 
a strong factor in the concentration of wealth and in 
wealth accumulation by trickery. And any teacher who 
attempts to free the coming citizen from this form of 
bondage is butting his head against a stone wall. Many 
a martyr of the school-room has been blacklisted, humil- 



NATURAL HDUCATION 



iated and relieved of his position simply because he dared 
to trace home the sources of our social distempers and 
group controls. 

Not only are teachers' mouths closed, but many of the 
sciences are either not taught at all or if taught are so 
pruned down that they become mere harmless negatives 
with which to amuse and decorate the child-mind. Can- 
didates for professorships in many American colleges are 
rejected on account of ''unsafe views" about ERROR. 
And the proportion is astounding. Ex-President A. D. 
White of Cornell University makes this amazing dis- 
closure* : 

' ' From probably nine-tenths of the Universities 
and Colleges of the United States, the students 
are graduated with either NO knowledge or with 
clerically emasculated knowledge of the most 
careful modern thot on the most important prob- 
lems in the various SCIENCES, in History and 
in Criticism." 
We see, therefore, that our first duty is to free our 
Teachers, and, second, to take the shackles from the hands 
of Science. And this can be done only by placing the 
control over the property of our schools in the hands of 
a large body of persons who will subscribe to the prin- 
ciple : 

"Whole Truth can be obtained only when all 
those seeking it own in common the property nec- 
essary to reveal Truth and have final authority 
over said property." 

BONDHOLDERS' CONTROL 

Most of our large cities carry a large bonded indebted- 
ness upon their School Plants. Most people do not see 
anything in particular wrong about such a debt. In fact, 
they usually endorse it under the impression that they 
are getting better facilities for their children sooner than 
they would by taxation. But this system is loaded down 
with spoliation and foul play. Buildings erected forty 

•The Warfare of Science and Theology. By Andrew D. White. 

10 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



years ago by this same system, we are discarding as inade- 
quate to the high-pressure needs of this generation and 
new ones are erected by the contract-fattening class. We 
are geting buildings far more expensive than they should 
be, not to make book-study more easy or the comfort of 
our children greater, but to make "fat" jobs for archi- 
tects and contractors and a place for more materials made 
by brick and other manufacturers. 

With the coming of a more democratic industrial school 
system, but few if any of our present million-dollar monu- 
ments to an era of white-fingered book-training will be 
of much use. Our two- and three-storied buildings also 
contribute largely to this age of Tuberculosis, Anemias 
and Insanity. Besides building more for utility and health, 
there is every reason why our school buildings should all 
be under the federal government and be built upon some 
concerted plan, suited to expansion and change. We are 
now in a constant state of experimentation with no settled 
policy except that all buildings must conform to the ' ' Con- 
finement Method" of teaching our children how NOT to 
make a living and become self-governing. 

But paying Interest and Principal is the least of the 
wrongs the public suffers under the Bond system. In 
Kansas City the schools are bonded for $5,000,000. The 
question arises, "Who really owais those buildings?" Who 
controls them ? Who dictates their uses ? Who nominates 
new members for the School Board? Who holds a silent 
control over what shall be taught? The Bondholding 
Class virtually own the properties in which they hold 
bonds. It is so in Railroads, Mines and Packing Plants, 
it is so in Schools. And this ownership is the stone-wall 
in the way of Democracy. 

11 



NATURAL KnUCATION 



CHAPTER 2 

THE PRESENT SCHOOL SYSTEM 

ITS FAILURE, INADEQUACY AND INEFFICIENCY 

It is not the desire nor tlie intention of the Avriter to 
condemn our School System in total nor to overlook the 
value it has been in disseminating much knowledge more 
or less practical and uplifting in nature and of lowering 
the percentage of illiteracy so that it is now quite a dis- 
honor not to be able to read and write. What is needed 
is not criticism but constructive light to help us to sup- 
plement or reconstruct the present system so that it shall 
be truly adequate and efficient for the requirements of 
industry and for the needs of an advanced state of social 
justice. No one has the right to point out the wrongs of 
the present system before he has a clear idea of what 
should be done to improve it and make it respond to the 
overwhelming demands of our most aggressive and enter- 
prising nation and age. 

THE ORDER OF NATURE IN EDUCATION 

The basic failure of our present system is that it is not 
founded upon Nature. It is almost wholly artificial, ab- 
stract and far removed from the great storehouse of all 
fundamental knowledge as found in the world round 
about us. Inasmuch as the knowledge of most value to 
human welfare pertains to making Nature yield to the 
wants of man, it follows that any system of training that 
neglects or excludes this fundamental knowledge or does 
not follow the orderly sequence of Nature in presenting 
it to the young mind, is not only inadequate and a failure, 
but borders on the twilight zone of scholastic teaching, to 
ke6p our children in mental bondage. 

Then before we point out some of the failures, inade- 
quacy and inefficiency of the present system, it is best to 
lay the foundation stones for a system that cannot fail 
because laid in the cement of eternal verity. Nature is 
eternal, orderly, unyielding, a strict accountant and never 

12 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



fails to overthrow any man-made system, law or state not 
in aeeord with her array of positive forces. Therefore it 
behooves us as sane beings to bow to her mandates and 
seek out the pathway she would have us follow. 

The first essential, then, is to adopt the Order of Nature 
whatever that may be and make it the rule of Pedagogy. 
And the second great principle upon which to build a 
sound educational system is to design it so that every 
human being of mature age and sound mind shall come 
into possession of the Laws and Principles of Generalized 
Knowledge. When the great truths in the natural order 
are known, every minor truth, every small item of knowl- 
edge, every detail in the whole range of experience and 
of nature, finds its place immediately the moment it is 
presented to the mind. And only to the mind in posses- 
sion of general truths do such details possess any mean- 
ing or value. 

Fundamental education is but a mind record of natural 
causes regarding the properties and relations of matter. 
And this record is acquired thru Causality the most fun- 
damental faculty of the human mind. It is the faculty 
that asks Why this and Why that and makes a normal 
child a veritable question mark. When the child learns 
the simple causes of natural phenomena it soon puts them 
together in generalized form and we say that he has ac- 
quired Generalized Knowledge. He now can THINK, for 
in knowing the CAUSE of things one can THINK and 
not before. 

Moreover, when the mind is approached by the relation 
of Cause and Effect, study is made a pleasure. Learning 
things naturally related possesses a charm that carries 
the young mind along irresistibly step by step up to the 
more and more complex and it is all retained. He has 
seen it, he has heard it, felt it, tasted it or has noted its 
sweet odor and then has asked the WHY about it all till 
he has a full understanding of the thing from first-handed 
knowledge. Evidently he can get none of this from a 
printed page. The mind must come into contact with 

13 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



matter in all its forms to study Cause and Effect in the 
concrete. The record on the printed page with nothing 
material to show that one thing is the cause of another, 
requires an arbitrary, unnatural act of the mind to try 
to comprehend it, and learning by it alone becomes slow 
and tedious as well as uninteresting. 

THE ORDER OF NATURE FOUND IN SCIENCE 

All nature, every conceivable phenomena, fact, force, 
property, substance or thing in the entire universe finds 
its place and explanation within the scope of the six fun- 
damental sciences, according to Ward,* arranged as fol- 
lows in their ascending order from the standpoint of de- 
pendence and subordination : 

ASTRONOMY, PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY, BIOLOGY, 
PSYCHOLOGY and SOCIOLOGY. 

These sciences diminish in generality and increase in 
complexity as we ascend the series. Astronomy is the 
most general and least complex while the phenomena of 
Sociology are the least general and most complex. And 
this Law of Science is the TRUE ORDER OF NATURE 
and all the phenomena of the Universe present themselves 
to our comprehension in this order. The relation also is 
a causal one ; and from a pedagogic standing Ave must 
study nature in the order of these sciences that we may 
see how each following science in the series depends upon 
the phenomena and causes of the science preceding it. 
As Ward says regarding this series,* 

"Any attempt to study the higher ones before 
the lower ones have been studied, not only must 
involve a great waste of time and energy, but 
must fail to furnish any true knowledge of sci- 
ence and of nature. It must also be very difficult, 
irksome, and tedious, and what little is learned is 
speedily forgotten." 

* Ibid 

14 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



All other sciences are related to and can be classed 
under these ground-work sciences. Geology and its re- 
lated branches readily fall under Astronomy ; Engineer- 
ing under Physics and Chemistry ; Zoology and Botany 
and their branches under Biology ; Economics, History 
and Pedagogy are now classed as special social sciences 
and belong to Sociology. 

And what should be done in all our schools in arrang- 
ing studies according to the Order of Nature is to have 
every science follow the sequence of the six basic sciences. 
Biology, Physiology, Medicine, Zoology or Botany should 
never be studied prior to the study of Astronomy, Physics 
and Chemistry. Neither should Psychology be studied 
before Biology and the preceding sciences in the series. 
And above all, no one can fully grasp social problems nor 
government nor economics nor social adjustment, the 
highest knowledge of human conception, before having a 
General Knowledge of the five sciences named first in the 
Natural Order series. The ignorance of these related 
sciences is the cause of the division of society into con- 
tending factions and of all manner of strife and war. 

THE PRIMARY END OF AN EDUCATION 

Is to give strength to one's reasoning and thinking 
powers, and to learn how to use and apply these powers 
to the welfare of self and society. But with educators 
there seems to be no clear-cut line of procedure or out- 
lines of study or sequence to attain the greatest mind 
strength as well as the most comprehensive grasp upon 
the knowledge found in Nature. When asked a specific 
use of a certain study, they commonly answer, "to develop 
the mind". This vague phrase carries with it a false con- 
ception of what the True Order of Nature is and what 
bearing it has in giving order and sequence to the reason- 
ing and thinking powers of the mind. Some studies de- 
stroy the reasoning faculty and they find a rather large 
place in our average curricula. 

15 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



While mathematics, which is not a science, may "dis- 
cipline the mind in exactness and consistency of thot" as 
has long been held, yet if "exclusively pursued, destroys 
both the reason and judgment". As Ward says*, 

"This is because it consist^) in prolonged think- 
ing about NOTHING. A 'point' has neither 
length, breadth, nor thickness. It is NOTHING. 
A line without thickness is equally NOTHING." 
It is only when these terras are invested with material 
attribtues, that the mind really thinks. ' ' Geometry could 
never have existed but for men's experience with real 
things." Purely hypothetical mathematics is demoraliz- 
ing to the thinking powers. 

"THE ONLY THING THAT CAN 'DEVELOP' OR 
'STRENGTHEN' THE FACULTIES OR THE MIND IS 
KNOWLEDGE, AND ALL REAL KNOWLEDGE IS 
SCIENCE." 

Science furnishes the mind with Realities. These con- 
stitute its contents, and the power, value, and real char- 
acter of mind depend upon its contents. Without knowl- 
edge, the mind, however capable, is impotent and worth- 
less. 

"Science is the only working power of society," says 
AVard, "and the working power of society increases in 
proportion to the number possessing it. Only a few minds 
possess any considerable part of it. All are capable of 
possessing it all. The Paramount Duty of Society there- 
fore is to put Knowledge into the minds of all its mem- 
bers." 

LOWEST AND MOST DANGEROUS CLASS, 
SOCIETY SHOULD EDUCATE 

Probably the most irrational thing society does today, 
is the cruelty it metes out to the so-called criminal classes. 
The more we punish them the more they increase in num- 
ber and the greater the rebound on society in expense and 
industrial loss. About 13 per cent of criminals have de- 

* Ibid 

16 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



linqiient minds and should be in a sanitarium for treat- 
ment, and 87 per cent are forced into the criminal class 
by the absurd and abnormal conditions society forces onto 
them. If, then, society has set up conditions of living 
such as to drive even a small per cent of its members into 
law-breaking, high or low, big or little, society is to blame 
and not the one who commits a crime. This is the view 
now taken by all our leading Sociologists in our Univer- 
sities. 

And what society should do most of all is to rescue 
every child from our slums of groggeries and bawdy- 
houses and give them the Generalized Knowledge in the 
Science Series forming the Order of Nature and in the 
midst of Nature. With this done and society opens the 
doors of opportunity in the Order of Nature, the 87 per 
cent of sane criminals will entirely disappear. 
Ward, our greatest social philosopher, says* : 

"The people that make up the slums and the 
criminal classes of society are capable of being 
made good and useful citizens, — nay, in the nor- 
mal proportion of all classes, they may become 
agents of civilization and may contribute to hu- 
man achievement. In a certain very proper sense 
SOCIETY HAS FORCED THEM INTO THIS 
FIELD and they are making the best use they 
can of their native abilities. There is no other 
class in society whose Education is half so im- 
portant as this lowest and most dangerous 
class." 

IS OUR SCHOOL PLANT FIT? 

BUILDINGS FOR THE CONFINEMENT METHOD 

With the constructive objects of education before us 
and the Order of Nature as the guide in the formation of 
study courses, and the broadening altruism with it all to 
inspire us, can we not turn to the question of introspec- 
tion with honesty of purpose and face the defects in the 
present school system ? Shall we let our better judgment 

♦Applied Sociology. By Lester F. Ward. 

17 



NATURAL KDUCATION 



be misled by pretentious structures with heat, light and 
ventilation adjusted with scientific accuracy and our sense 
of duty blunted by makeshifts in training under unnat- 
ural confinement? 

In the modern factory, the modern mine, or on the mod- 
ern farm, all run to get the largest output with the least 
waste and cost, every detail is considered and guarded. 
Buildings are erected and machinery installed and imple- 
ments used fitted to the needs of the industry. As new 
inventions or methods are introduced, the old are dis- 
carded. The efficiency of the new outweighs the cost of 
making the change. In other words, industry tries to 
keep pace with advanced methods of production and dis- 
tribution. And inasmuch as all knowledge is concerned 
with Production, Distribution and Consumption, it follows 
that both the knowledge of the science and of the art of 
these three great divisions of man's activities should not 
only be taught in a rational school system, but also should 
keep abreast with all the advances made in all the indus- 
tries as well. A school to be adequate should be the em- 
bryonic factory, mine, farm, counting-house, railroad and 
of all the great group of vocations-. Is our School Plant 
adequate in any sense of the word to these requirements? 
Does it keep pace with Industry? Does it prepare boys 
and girls for anything in particular? 

Leavitt of the Chicago University states the caspe 
strongly thusf : 

"We take boys and girls at a time when their 
impulses are strong for active participation in 
the vital interests of life and we confine them 
within narrow schoolroom cells with books and 
pencils as the chief and sole means of participa- 
tion. We take them when their individual differ- 
ences in capacity, interests and prospective ca- 
reers are properly matters of growing and vital 
concern and we require them to pursue a uniform 
course of study having little direct relation to 
those specific powers, motives and prospects." 

tExamples of Industrial Education. By F. M. Leavitt. 

18 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



Our school plant is designed almost entirely to teach 
the abstract on the printed page, and no young mind is 
fitted for nor interested in the study of words. Not books 
but THINGS hold the interest and attention of children. 
And not till a School Plant is devised which will deal 
with THINGS and PROCESSES primarily and with the 
language, mathematics and other elementary secondary 
l)ranches needed in the study and application of THINGS 
and PROCESSES, will we have a School Plant following 
the natural bent of every child and the trend of all life 
itself. 

OUK TEXT-BOOK MEDLEY AND OUR 
APPARATUS JUNK. 

And it is a medley and a junk heap, and unprejudiced 
observers admit it. Uniformity, thorogoing instruction 
facilities and the latest and best of everything to make 
school-life something real and a stepping-stone to a life 
of usefulness, would mean Federal Government CON- 
TROL and that would not suit the multitude of profit 
harpies at the heels of our present system. It would not 
do for a child to have a set of books he could use in Cali- 
fornia as well as in New York. No, the parent must pro- 
vide for a change on moving even to an adjoining school 
district two miles away. Then, too, the *'new teacher" 
wants some new-fangled spelling-book or language-book 
(full of System peeans) and the Board orders the change. 
The patrons protest, but the books must be bot, "the 
Board has the authority". Kansas as a state publishes 
her school text-books and furnishes them FREE to all her 
schools. Some few states buy the school-books for the 
whole state from private book concerns and furnish them 
free, but what a large portion of our country is still in 
the hands of Profiteers ! 

Then, too, text-book mongers have learned that it is to 
their PROFIT to pander to the clamor for more objective 
features in their books. The school "Board" has no au- 
thority to have a cow or a mule or a skunk at the school 

19 



NATURAL EDT'CATION 



for instructive purposes, hence the demand for the ''half- 
tone, true-to-life" picture of the same to hold the interest 
and curiosity of Johnnie. So today our "Texts" have 
become portable picture-galleries Avith "catchy" filigrees 
to make "talking points" before the Text-book Commit- 
tee. Not to build Brains and LIVES OF ACHIEVEMENT, , 
but to build FORTUNES, are text-books noAv made, and 
our SYSTEM maintains this exploitation of our children. 
Great System, isn't it? 

However "traveled" you may be, you have missed 
many of America's school-room sceneries. The scenes are 
as frequent as are High Schools and sectarian colleges. I 
refer to the "grand" display of Apparatus. It is almost 
tragic in its disorder, odds and ends and ancientness. 
Some pieces date back to when grandma attended school 
and they still have dust upon them she helped to make. 
Then, too, each piece has a historical halo of regard and 
local enshrinement of bygone selectors of this ' ' concourse 
of atoms ". " Mr. Brown, who was here twenty years ago, 
selected this piece. And Mr. Jones, whom everybody 
loved, made this piece. He was so enthusiastic over elec- 
tricity. " And so on with the whole confusion of the plan- 
less lumber with which our children are supposed to get 
the fundamental knowledge of the forms, products, func- 
tions, harmony, change, properties, laws and classifica- 
tion of Nature. 

Instead of apparatus composed of pieces made by regu- 
lar manufacturers to do work in regular factories from 
which the latest technique can be learned and the latest 
mechanism studied, "Boards have the authority" to buy 
from "Junk" makers only apparatus "toys" for High 
Schools, Military Institutes, Seminaries, Parochial Schools 
and other places Avhere the coming generation Avill not get 
too interested in the application of the Physical Sciences 
to life 's needs, and lose interest in litanies, fairy tales and 
smart-set jargon in French or Italian. 

20 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR "GENTLEMEN" 

What else is an appropriate appellation for our so-called 
Manual Training Schools in which not a single piece of 
machinery is used as are found in regular factories? They 
are but schools for children whom their parents never ex- 
pect to toil for their living, but who must learn the use of 
tools to keep up a semblance of sanctioning the demands 
of a growing Democracy that requires "Everybody to 
Work". 

How do those who think that the Manual Training 
School prepares one for the real activities of life, square 
their opinions with the following quotation from F. G. 
Bonser, Director Industrial Arts, Columbia University* : 
"I count it a travesty upon our schools and a 
tragedy for our boys and girls that a number of 
large hardware dealers in New York who con- 
duct supply houses for the whole country, carry 
a large stock of goods no longer used at all in 
the trades, but carried to meet the steady or even 
increasing demand of the Manual Training de- 
partments and schools of the country." 

"The work of a thousand Manual Training 
Teachers in this country, fondly supposing them- 
selves to be vocational trainers for present-day 
industry, shows how the factory system with its 
division of labor, its machine processes, and its 
applied science has entirely esicaped them." 

THE "TRY-OUT" SYSTEM 

Manufacturers today are forced to go into the open 
market and take such labor as they can find and "try" it. 
They often take half a dozen on trial to get one for a par- 
ticular process. This is expensive, haphazard, and unsat- 
isfactory. In large Corporations schools are maintained 
to prepare labor for their one industry, and this, too, im- 
poses a heavy expense and an environment for the stu- 
dent not conducive to natural training and a succe»ssful 
life. 

•Bulletin No. 14, 1914, U. S. Bureau of Education. 

21 



NATUKAL EDUCATION 



To get first-handed information as to what large manu- 
facturers want in an educational institution to prepare 
workers for industry and thus avoid the "Try-Out" sys- 
tem, the writer called upon seventeen in Kansas City. 
I was agreeably surprised at the unanimity of opinion that 
our present Manual Training work is a failure so far as 
they benefited by it. One said, "It always makes me 
smile when I visit a Manual Training school to see the old 
lathes they use." When asked, "How would it be if we 
had training institutions where any one of any age or sex 
could be prepared for some definite skilled work so that 
he or she could step from training school into the factory 
and start at once as a skilled operator upon the regular 
full wage?" Invariably the answer was, "That surely 
would be great!" I said it could be done and it must be 
done. They all expressed a deep interest in the School 
Town System described in Chapter 5 and said they would 
be willing to donate machinery or products which they 
make for study and operation to adapt the school to the 
exact needs of their several industries. 



OUR SCHOOL SYSTEM INELASTIC 

Our present system has little or no adaptability to the 
inequalities found in children. The reflective and percep- 
tive, the commercial and mechanical, the professional and 
literary types of minds are all crowded together into the 
same room, with the same books, the same teacher, the 
same discipline, the same method of grading and advance- 
ment, the same number of months to attend each year, for 
the same amount of unrelated book-stulf. The abnormally 
deficient and the abnormally overdeveloped, those of good 
and bad special senses, those with wide mental capacities 
of attention and memory, are all treated with the same 
prescription daily. And for thosie with little or no im- 
agination, only the most exaggerated and distorted mind 
pictures are developed from the printed page. This is 
well illustrated by city children expressing astonishment 
and asking such trivial and amusing questions on seeing 

22 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



for the first time the commonest as well as the most im- 
portant animals and plants which supply the everyday 
wants of man. 

Not the picture but the real cow, the real apple tree, 
the real plow, the real engine, must be substituted for 
book-trust pictures wearily reviewed every day in a mil- 
lion-dollar building. The plan of building and teaching 
at Smith's Agricultural School at Northamton, Mass., 
with an arena in which animals and crops are judged and 
studied, more generally applied to our whole system, is 
far superior to watching Johnie six long hours a day to 
see that he does not do anything natural when virtually 
imprisoned in a hard seat from which he dare not leave 
or whisper or break the monotony by thromng a paper 
wad. It is almost cruel to keep children inactive longer 
than an hour and even that hour should be one of move- 
ment and animated talk. Confinement is ultra antag- 
onistic to every child instinct. 

EVILS OUR SYSTEM FAILS TO CORRECT 

One of the strongest indictments of our system was 
uttered by ex-President Elliot of Harvard before the Con- 
necticut State Teachers' Association. He said: 

"These evils fall under three heads: 1. Mis- 
government instead of public efficiency. 2. Dis- 
sipation and idling instead of a constructive use 
of leisure and recreation. 3. Cleavage and class 
feeling instead of social order and public spirit." 

FAULTY EDUCATION GIVES GOVERNMENT 
CONTROL TO THE DRONES 

Let us see if President Elliot was right. If so, our sys- 
tem should be revolutionized at once. A Democracy is 
one in which the government is under control of the whole 
people. But to have such control every citizen must have 
the knowledge necessary to give him an enlightened vote. 
He must have the Generalized Knowledge referred to in 
this chapter else he will not know nature's plan of jus- 

23 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



tice. Aristocracy has planted in this civilization certain 
customs of ownership, especially of land, that keeps it 
intrenched and forces the laboring masses to support it in 
idleness. These customs are taught from the standpoint 
of being "right" thruout our whole school system. The 
child comes from school with these false customs and 
practices fixed in mind as the only method of dealing with 
property; and not knowing the disasters that come to 
society from them, he falls in line as a citizen who actu- 
ally supports what enslaves him. 

Also knowing that ignorance of statecraft and of social 
economics is favorable to government control by the large 
property owners, they have ahvays found that control 
over law-making is a powerful means of diverting wealth 
into their hands. Why work if a crooked law shifts wealth 
from the ignorant, honest worker to the wise, dishonest 
idler? The leisure class must rule or starve or beg or 
steal or become producers. To force them into the pro- 
ducing class, a large proportion of the willing workers 
must gain a knowledge of how^ to rule as well as how to 
produce. And that means that Statecraft MUST BE 
PRACTICED in any system of education looking to the 
freedom of workers from drones. 

Our schools are managed upon the same sectarian basis 
as the political party, church, public press, league and 
club, and hence are run favorable to these groups. They 
do not invite an all-together expression from the v/hole 
community as to any public policy. Therefore, being ruled 
out of the right to manage their ovm affairs, the people 
have no experience in their all-together business and of 
course cannot aid in rectifying the causes for misgovern- 
ment. Like learning to plow or to construct a house, gov- 
ernment must be dealt with in the concrete to be compre- 
hended and means of social adjustment discovered. The 
beginning of our legislative, judicial, executive and infor- 
mational departments of government should be coincident 
with the beginning of school. The school will never be 
the seat of true Democracy till it is the seat of diffusing 
the knowledge of all the industries and affairs of men. 

24 



wrniOUT TAXATION 



Weeks supports these views in this language* : 
"It by no means follows that popular educa- 
tion guarantees Democracy. Indeed it may be 
the source of undemocratic conditions. It may 
thwart Democracy. Popular education may pro- 
mote Democracy only when the curriculum pre- 
pares the individual for the three great economic 
processes of Production, Distribution and Con- 
sumption. When this knowledge is ditfuscd thru- 
out society, class distinctions melt away and De- 
mocracy, so far as nature permits, must prevail." 
"First of all, the courses of study should be 
formed so that all should be trained as producers. 
If all are trained as producers there will be a ten- 
dency for all to continue to be producers. Aim- 
less idleness does not appeal to the man or woman 
who has been schooled in industry. If all are 
trained to do usefnl work, society would appreci- 
ate the workman's needs. If the sheltered classes 
knew from experience how slow and painful 
often are the processes of production, would there 
not be a new spirit in the world?" 

OUR SCHOOLS ENCOURAGE DISSIPATION 
AND IDLING 

Of all the shortcomings of our "free" school system, 
the unintentional encouragement to dissipation and idling 
is the worst. Wheeler of Clark University has said : 
"Learning now is secondary to pleasure at our 
colleges. It is no secret that there are loafers at 
Harvard. And what is true at Harvard is true of 
all the colleges of the Atlantic seaboard." 
This is the natural resultant of a system teaching 
largely how to consume and not how to produce and dis- 
tribute justly. 

But probably the greatest factor in augmenting the 
idling, intemperate, shiftless, homeless classes is our eco- 

*The Education of Tomorrow. By Arland D. Weeks. 

25 



NATURAL KDUCATION 



nomie shortsightedness in thrusting 85 per cent of our 
children into the awful tragedy of an overcrowded mar- 
ket of unskilled labor. Of those who thus pass unpre- 
pared into the industrial struggle between the ages of 12 
and 16, about 90 per cent fill blind-alley jobs to which 
there is no advance. They become the great horde of 
Jol)-Hunters who float from city to town without home, 
reputation or friends. As Professor Ely of Wisconsin 
University says : 

"The problem of child idleness is a far more 
serious question than the problem of child la- 
bor." 
And speaking of this horde as a national calamity, Pro- 
fessor Bonser of Columbia University asks* : 

"How long must this army of ambitious, capa- 
ble boys and girls be allowed to go to the scrap 
heap of adult inefficiency, disappointment, and 
too often of pauperism and crime? How long 
must this army of tens of thousands ask for the 
bread of real, present-day life, of opportunity to 
prepare for gaining an adequate, respectable and 
efficient living and citizenship, and be given the 
stones of academic gymnastics?" 
Again, treating those under 17 as incapable, irrespon- 
sible beings without judgment, without reasoning power, 
witliout self-assertion or the capacity of self-support, is 
another reason for a country-wide shiftless, game-seeking 
contingent of thousands of capable young men and 
women. William R. George, founder of the Junior Repub- 
lic, says in this relationf : 

"Boys sometimes become so desperate from be- 
ing preached at and treated as irresponsible be- 
ings, that they commit violent and often criminal 
acts to assert their self-respect. Every youth hasi 
an instinctive fellow feeling for every other 
youth who falls into the toils of adult-made law^s. 
The lad who does a dare-devil act against prop- 

*Bulletin No. 14, 1914, U. S. Bureau of Education. 
tCitizens Made and Remade. By William R. George. 

26 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



erty has the open or secret admiration of prac- 
tically all youth who know him, and he knows it. 
Give these selfsame law-breakers full responsibil- 
ity of property, of self-support, of law-making 
and civic responsibility, and at once the point of ■ 
view is changed and the dare-devil heroism dis- 
appears. They see it is a menace to property and 
the stability of society in which they now have 
a stake." 
Our youth yearn for activity, for power of control, for 
self-assertion, but unfortunately in our training plant 
their wills are repressed by Board Rules in which they 
have no voice, adult laws, and too often parental and 
teacher admonitions that belittles and discourages them. 
Thus having no responsibility, no hand in making their 
school-buildings, their clothes, their food, their books, or 
their tools, they are in the position toward all these as 
mere consumers. And not costing them lalior, they have 
no appreciation of their values and therefore tend to 
waste them ruthlessly and even boast to their fellows of 
their prodigality. Thus school-buildings costing thou- 
sands are carelessly mutilated, books destroyed, food 
wasted, tools and machinery ill-used and their clothes are 
scuffed out with no regard as to how they are to be re- 
placed. 

CLEAVAGE AND CLASS FEELING 
ENGENDERED 

From the fact that our schools are class-ruled, they nat- 
urally follow the caste-forming strategies. And promi- 
nent among these undemocratic hostilities are as follows : 
the Doctrine of Inequality, the admixture of true and false 
causation, the teaching of fashionable nonessentials for 
show, and the absurd worship of military and big land- 
owning "heroes". Class-feeling and division are the only 
resultants from such an intellectual desecration. 

The Doctrine that the difference between the upper and 
Jower classes of society is due to difference in their intel- 

27 



NATURAL VDUCATinx 



lectual capacity, something "preordained" and inherently- 
inevitable, is entirely false. Every form of sophistry is 
employed to uphold this view. We are told there must 
be social classes, that they are a necessary part of the 
social order. That there must be laborers and unskilled 
workmen to do the drudgery of the world. That there 
must be menial servants to wait upon us. That only the 
"Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal" are capable of 
controlling social and national affairs. 

This is an old^ Doctrine and it is only within recent 
years that our deep students of society have brot to light 
the real truth regarding intellectual capacity, and they 
are now declaring that "Intellectual inequality is comjnon 
to all classes". Ward tells us that,* 

"If an equal number taken at random of the 
lowest stratum of society had been surrounded 
from their birth by exactly the same conditions 
by which the intelligent class have been sur- 
rounded, they would in fact have constituted the 
intelligent class, instead of the particular indi- 
viduals who happen actually to constitute it." 
In other words, class distinctions in society are wholly 
artificial, depend entirely on environing conditions, and 
are in no sense due to differences in native capacity. 
What was once the slave class in the Middle Ages is now 
furnishing the brains of the world, and if there is any in- 
tellectual inferiority it is found in the poor remnant that 
still calls itself the Nobility in some countries. 

Along Avith this Doctrine of Inequality there followed 
the fallacy that only the "well-bred" could understand 
TRUTH. But this, too, is false. Quoting Ward again, he 
says : 

"Helvetius maintained that all Truth is within 
the reach of all men. This is certainly true for all 
practical truth. And truth that is so subtle or 
involved that it cannot be grasped not only by 
the average mind, but by minds of minimum 
power, is likely to be of little practical value as 

•Applied Sociology. By Lester F. Ward 

28 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



a guide to conduct and an aid to success in life. 
Most of the so-called 'knowledge' so difficult to 
acquire is not in fact knowledge or truth at all, 
but fine-spun theory, hair-splitting metaphysical 
disquisition, and mere mental gymnastics, by 
which the mind is violently exercised over prob- 
lems Avithout objective content. It isi largely 
'abstract reasoning', by which is meant reasoning 
without anything to reason about. This is and 
ought to be difficult, because it is useless. But as 
soon as a real something is furnished to the mind, 
it is not only readily perceived but easily rea- 
soned about by all sane minds. And such knowl- 
edge and truth are always useful." 
The second cause for dividing society into classes is 
found in mixing True and False causation in our schools. 
This fact is pressed home and convincingly stated by Prin- 
cipal Henderson of a Philadelphia Manual Training school 

thust : 

"The ability to be consistent is a proper test 
of intellectual progress. A great advance has 
been made when the Beliefs in one department of 
thot are not entirely contradicted and neutralized 
by the Beliefs in another department ; Avhen ^ur 
science does not contradict our religion, and our 
religion our politics, and our politics our sociol- 
ogy. AVith religion and ethics and sociology and 
biology in a state of incoherence and empiricism, 
it is manifestly impossible for education to be 
rational. 

"Education has too often been a thwarting of 
the spirit, an attempt to fit a square plug in a 
round hole, a pressure, a dead weight, rather than 
an unfolding. We shall succeed when we aban- 
don our educational nostrums, our tonics, our 
pills, our philosopher's stones for turning ignor- 
ance into knowledge, our short-cut methods of 

tCause and Effect in Education. By C. H. Henderson. Popular 
Science Monthly, May, 1894. 

29 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



salvation for making BAD into GOOD. We shall . 
transform education into a science and educators 
into scientists when we give up these off-hand 
remedies, these false views of causal relation- 
ships, and come to recognize the simple fact that 
the child is an ORGANISM, and that the proc- 
esses of groAvth and education must conform to 
the Laws of Organisms. We say the boy is bad 
when Ave ought to say that his life conditions are 
unfavorable ; that his parents and teachers are 
unwise. ' ' 
The third element in our system which keeps up class 
distinctions, is the teaching of traditional studies and 
those which our smart society dictates as "classic" and 
of course favorable to the maintenance of itself as the 
ruling and non-producing class. And this SHOW and 
IGNORANCE is keeping a large percent of the producing 
classes duped into the belief that if their children can be- 
come "cultivated" with Latin, Greek Myths and poetry, 
that somehow they too mil be able to take their places in 
the exclusive class and not be obliged to live by drudgery. 
As Herbert Spencer says :* 

"Men dress their children's minds as they do 
their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. If we in- 
quire what is the real motive for giving boys a 
Classical Education, we find it to be simply con- 
formity to public opinion. The immense prepon- 
derance of "accomplishments" proves how USE 
is subordinated to DISPLAY. Dancing, deport- 
ment, the piano, singing, drawing — what a large 
space do these occupy. * * * Not what knowl- 
edge is of most real worth, is the consideration ; 
but what will bring most applause, honor, re- 
spect, what will most conduce to social position 
and influence, what will be most imposing." 

THE PARAMOUNT DECEPTION 

While military and royal oppression have been largely 

♦Education. By Herbert Spencer. 

30 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



overthrown and the power of the nobility and the priest- 
hood have been broken, the unabated fact remains today 
that we have new forms of oppression, new forms of slav- 
ery and serfdom, and a new type of feudalism, all of which 
are quite as effectual in siupporting- an idle, spendthrift 
class and in degrading the masses into servitude as were 
the older forms of oppression intensified by religious per- 
secutions. The consummate deception of today is in 
preaching and teaching pernicious and false economic doc- 
trines to the exploited workingman and to his children as 
well as false historic facts regarding the origin of our 
institutions. 

Our children leave school, most of them still children, 
with distorted and exaggerated estimates of the ''great- 
ness" and ''justness" of our government, the "magnifi- 
cence" of our western civilization over all others, and 
the "wonderful efficiency" of our social and political in- 
stitutions. They are surcharged with the eagerness to 
enter the field of exploitation to become rich, to become a 
Lord over a million acres, over a railroad system, over 
the stock exchange or as a magnate dictating the financial 
destiny of tribute-paying toilers. 

Both children and teachers are grossly deceived into 
the belief that we are enjoying "the best school system 
in the world", and that the system prepares one for the 
"exceptional opportunities" awaiting the magic touch of 
graduates "to turn base metal into gold." In this con- 
nection Dr. Russell of Columbia Umversity made this open 
comment : 

"The public school system of the United States 
is tending to develop grumblers, faultfinders. So- 
cialists and Anarchists. The greatest peril of our 
education today is that it promises an open door 
to every boy and girl up to the age of fourteen 
and then turns him ruthlessly into the world to 
find most doors not only closed, but locked 
against him". 
University men almost with one accord are condemn- 

31 



NATURAL E;DUCATI0N 



ing our system and pointing out its deceptions. Dr. Irv- 
ing King of the University of Iowa makes this incisive 
comment :t 

"Our public school work today is being sub- 
jected to a rapid-fire criticism of a most search- 
ing order. Some of it must be seriously faced. 
That a good deal of school work from the begin- 
ning to the end does not make for vital contact 
with the child and youth is fairly evident. * * * 
The work of the school is so abstract and un- 
related to the interests of life that it fails to grip 
them in any impelling way." 
If then we are willing to investigate our system with- 
out prejudice, it takes but little insight to see that the 
pathway of our present school life is artfully banked with 
perfumed roses and diverting for-get-me-nots to conceal 
the hideous thorns and deadly poison-oaks found in our 
past and present social and political underbrush. 



CHAPTER 3 



THE SCOPE, PRINCIPLES AND BIOLOGICAL BASIS 
FOR A NATURAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 



THE NEW WORLD-VIEW DEMAND OF EDUCATION 

Out of the travail of society there had been born a new 
social life with new demands to meet the realizations of 
what has evolved into a fulMedged World-View of Edu- 
cation for World Organization. And these new demands 
encircling the globe, coming from all thinking men of 
every race and every nation are focusing upon one cen- 
tral, dominating fact inherent in all humanity itself ; and 
that fact is, in the words of Bridgeman:* 

''The mind of the world will ceaselessly de- 
mand TRUTH and it will have Truth as far as it 

tEducation for Social Efficiency. By Irving King. 
♦World Organization. Raymond L. Bridgeman. 

82 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



has increasing power to attain it. History will 
be reversed unless there continues a weeding out 
of ERROR and a progressive establishment of 
that Avhich the mind cannot overthrow because it 
satisfies the demands for eternal verity." 
Then indicating along what line education will have to 

follow for man to increase his power to attain Truth, he 

clearly expresses it thus : 

''World organization must grow out of the es- 
sential unity of mankind. It cannot be a federa- 
tion or any agreement which has in itself the 
seeds of nullification or secession or any implica- 
tion that the conditions were created by men and 
may be destroyed by men at will." 

Since organization of any character implies education 
and preparation, we get the larger view of the features of 
a system of education which will be comprehensive enough 
to meet the demands of this "Unity of Mankind" to se- 
cure omnipotent Truth found in the very nature of things 
and which exist and advance in spite of the obstructive 
creations of men. Our very existence demands that we 
shall know certain fundamental operations — how to pro- 
duce, how to distribute, and how to consume. And all 
law and all constitutions denying the innate right to any 
human being of the opportunity to secure this knowledge 
and to apply it to his full content to the resources of the 
earth, is contrary to the constitution and laws of the 
"very nature of things" and all such opposing laws and 
constitutions wnll be swept aside by the great current of 
the "unity of mankind". 

The grooving world-view is that education must be a 
universal life-growth for each individual of whatever race 
to realize his or her fullest life powers. The world-view 
realizes that if a single individual is neglected and does 
not have the educational advantages to develop his or her 
faculties to their full content, that the progress of society 
as a whole is retarded. Every individual who has no 
knowledge of production must per force live on the pro- 
duction of another ; he thus- becomes a social parasite, a 

33 



NATURAL KDUCATIOX 



drone, or a thief. Drones and non-producers nullify the 
laws of social progress ; in the very nature of things they 
are social obstructionists. Then the future trend of edu- 
cation must be toward the elimination of the non-pro- 
ducer. In other words, education must be along the lines. 
of SELF-SUPPORT and SELF-GOVERNMENT. 

FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES 

All systems of human action are based upon some fun- 
damental principles of control. And to devise an educa- 
tional system that will oppose the rule of a class, it must 
be based upon principles fitted to the Altogether Control 
which in itself is Democracy. While the Principles given 
below may seem radical to some and without an empirical 
basis, they have been deduced from the various education- 
al experiments which have proven to be sound, feasible 
and basic. They are now in practice part here and part 
there in the Junior Republics of the East, in the Commer- 
cial-Shop trade schools in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, in the 
part-time Trade Schools of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, the 
Commercial-Shop Trade School of Worcester, Mass., in 
the Continuation Schools of Cincinnati and several more 
educational tests and plans now in operation in a num- 
ber of cities. 

They have all been subjected to the crucial test of 
thorogoing experience and have not been found wanting. 
All we need to do is to enlarge upon and coordinate 
schools like these pioneers to have those that hold to all 
these Principles ; and when we accomplish that, educa- 
tional as well as political freedom is won. 

PRINCIPLES 

1. No student can develop normally, become self-reli- 
ant and obedient to law, without the democracy of self- 
government and self-support. 

2. Without remunerative labor at the seat of learning, 
general education is impossible. Such labor, also, should 
be related to and be a part of a course of study. 

34 



WITHOUT TAXATIOX 



3. To secure the maximum of interest, thoroness, speed 
and efficiency in any technical course of study, useful 
labor is imperative. 

4. Whole truth can be obtained only when all those 
seekiuf? it own in common the property necessary to re- 
veal truth and have final authority over said property. 

5. The division of any student body into fraternal or 
sectarian groups is hostile to the spirit and growth of 
•democracy and detrimental to the acquirement of truth. 

6. The maintenance of both student and school should, 
so far as feasible, depend upon commercial products made 
by student labor. 

7. Educational facilities should cover, so far as feas- 
ible, all the vocations of life and should adapt the natural 
aptitude of each student to the one best suited to him. 

NATURAL LAW VERSUS ARTIFICIAL LAW AS THE 
FOUNDATION OF A RATIONAL SYSTEM 
OF EDUCATION 

How shall we blast a way into the rock of hoary custom 
and into the flint of educational maladjustment? Where 
shall we begin? To put these Principles into practice is 
no easy task. A huge mountain of prejudice must be 
climbed and an ocean of sophistry must be crossed. But 
in educational as well as in commercial, industrial and 
ethical realms, progress has been made only when the 
orderly sequence of the universe as expressed in Natural 
Ijaw has been followed ; when we have excluded exterior 
supernaturalism and have applied the uniform unfolding 
of the present out of the past, in a word have followed the 
Law of Evolution, we have advanced. 

We have failed when we have not observed the true 
sequence of cause and effect in the life of the child. We 
have arbitrarily tried to pour the child-life of every pos- 
sibility into the same mould. On a fixed day and year it 
must be placed into the mould and on another custom- 
made, anti-nature day and year it must be taken out. In- 
stead of the school to fit the child, the child must fit the 

35 



NATURAL HnT'CATION 



school. The future system will be an adjustment of the 
school to every condition of the child-life, and will be 
designed and so appointed to make the maximum social 
force out of each human unit however strong or however 
weak in its organic construction. The new system will 
turn to good account every atom of possibility, every nat- 
ural tendency, every inborn power found in every yearn- 
ing breast. It wall not tolerate the frightful loss of mil- 
lions of human seed falling Dy the wayside, and on the 
rocky soil of premature toil to produce a fruitage of but 
five or ten fold; it will sow every seed on fertile soil away 
from the thistles of greed that each may bring forth a. 
social fruitage of an hundredfold. 

WE MUST ABANDON AGE ABSURDITIES 

Knowing that the child is an organism and that no two 
children ai'e of the same mental strength nor have the 
same attributes of mind, we are safe in concluding that 
the processes of its growth and education must conform 
to the laws of organisms. And all organic law operates 
on the basis of USE or function and adapts itself to the 
limitations of the organism. And in no truer sense should 
education conform to the age of the individual. Life from 
the cradle to the grave is a period of education ; and it is 
a mooted question at what age one's mind is most acute, 
receptive and educable. The absurdity of our present sys'- 
tem and the common error made by many of our educa- 
tors comes from a Report made to the Government by 
Henry Suzzallo as follows :* 

"That class in the community especially fa- 
vored with mental ability and financial resource, 
and for whom the colleges are intended, should 
in general complete its liberal education by the 
end of the twentieth year. * * * The period 
of plasticity during Avhich a human being can be 
PROFITABLY educated is not coterminous with 
life; people may be somewhat flexible and edu- 
cable to the end of life, but the period of great- 

*Bulletin No. 38, 1913, U. S. Bureau of Education. 

86 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



est educability closes for most by the end of the 
twenties. ' ' 

Very evidently, from this quotation, our system of edu- 
cation is not intended to give ALL our boys and girls a 
liberal or vocational mind power, but only those "favored 
with mental ability and financial resource." And, too, 
the colleges "are intended" for these only. This is and 
has been the aristocratic view of education down thru 
the ages. 

We hear educators state at conventions that the Public 
Schools must prepare candidates for our universities and 
colleges. In fact, that is the general accepted view of 
most of our teachers. But when we remember that but 
one-tenth of one per cent "favored with mental ability 
and financial resource" can complete a university course, 
we can more fully understand the motive behind our pres- 
ent system. 

Twenty-nine persons gain a living in business to one 
Avho gains a living in the professions, and about 74 per- 
sons gain a living in the agricultural and mechanical fields 
of labor to one in the professions, while a vast horde gain 
their living at common labor and nonadvancing jobs. 
From this statistical point of view, we surely can see that 
a system maintained at public expense to prepare one out 
of a thousand for college and the professions and inci- 
dentally teach the rudiments of knowledge and a mass of 
useless time-Avasters to the great generality of mankind, 
\s not only absurd but essentially unjust and prepos- 
terous. 

The fitting of the age of persons to our school system 
is uiibiological and a failure. Custom has shamed many 
a valuable young person from attending school slightly 
overage or above the average age of a class or grade. The 
future system will be open in every grade, in every study 
in every project, in every department to every person of 
every age. The school should be the repair-shop for any 
mentality to become a better social asset as Avell asi a place 
to build early mental structures. 

37 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



But this innovation, so sweeping in its scope and utility, 
brings me to consider a natural age question of vast im- 
portance to any comprehensive plan of education and for 
which probably a new one should be especially built. It 
is the question of segregation of youth as soon as they 
reach the age of puberty for school training. 

THE DEMANDS FOR SEGREGATION 
AT THE AGE OF PUBERTY 

The question society has not settled for its general wel- 
fare, is at Avhat age should an offspring cease to be main- 
tained and controlled by its parents? When does a human 
being really become self-supporting and self-governing? 
To say a boy at twenty-one and a girl at eighteen has 
reached such an age, is arbitrary and without scientifie 
foundation. To the biologist, Nature has declared other- 
wise. 

Every physiologist as well as every psychologist will 
affirm that when Nature matures the reproductive func- 
tions, that she thereby places her seal of adulthood upon 
every such individual. This ''wonderful" change and 
development in every normal individual at about the age 
of 13 or 14, in a few cases as late as 16, is a phenomena 
of vast import to an efficient educational system founded 
upon natural law. At this age the umbilical of depend- 
ence upon parents is severed and life takes on new de- 
sires, new impulses animating the fertile being to enter 
into the activities of life preparatory to the building of 
a new home. In fact, when we consider education broadly, 
it can be summed up in stating that it is to make the 
HOME a worthy unit of society. Profit-making is surely 
secondary to the Home, but in our present system PROFIT 
is placed first and Home last. 

Every mother and father will testify that as a rule their 
trouble with their boys and girls sets in largely at this 
physiological turning point in the life of their normal chil- 
dren. They become less obedient, demand more freedom, 
are more self-assertive. Unthinking people say with more 
wisdom than they realize, that youths at this near-adult 

38 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



age have the "swell-head". And they have very definite 
ideas of their own ; visions of achievement, visions of how 
they will acquire wealth, learning, position, and the ideals 
of a sex relationship. And to all this they have a war- 
rantee deed direct from Dame Nature, a title which no 
man-made law nor custom nor whim of parent can ever 
set aside or annul. 

And why should we wish to suppress this incarnation of 
a new momentum to life? Why should we wish to hold it 
under control and restraints? Why should we wish to 
confine it within narrow school-rooms removed from the 
very activities Mother Nature, in all her amazing creative 
power, hath ordained and approved? How can a boy or 
girl cultivate the power of self-assertion, hanging to the 
apron-strings of mother? Are not the mother's sympa- 
thies too shielding and too weakening? When war comes 
do we not take the boys in their teens away from mother 
and place them in the cantonment there to undergo the 
daily course of forced marches and all the hardening 
processes that they may stand the nerve and physical 
strain of the battle front? The industrial battle calls also 
for recruits with trained and well seasoned nerves and 
muscles from the actual school of experience. Industry 
demands it, our v.'illing boys and girls demand it, society 
as a whole demands it, and we MUST have it. 

The segregation of youth is not a new innovation. We 
send our girls early to the convent, female seminaries, 
private boarding schools, and our boys to military insti- 
tutes, agricultural colleges, business colleges and to many 
more training institutions away from mother and home. 
But to attend these schools, one must have parental sup- 
port and this is possible to but a small per cent of the 
whole student body of the country. That great army of 
ninety per cent of our children are not provided for in 
our schools of higher education and eighty-five per cent 
of the ninety must leave school between 12 and 16 to 
earn money. This shameful blot upon our civilization 
must be erased by reorganizing our system or building a 

39 



NATURAI^ EDUCATION 



new one based upon the seven foundation Principles 
named above. 

Elmer H. Fish, Principal of the Worcester Trade School, 
has done much to develop the ideas embodied in the Foun- 
dation Principles already stated. He says:* 

"It is wonderful what an amount of potential 
energy there is in a 14-year-old boy that can be 
turned into a large amount of valuable work. 
And that institution which could pay wages to 
its students is the best possible solution of the 
educational problem." 

At the Worcester school, wood and iron are manufac- 
tured in the various shops for the market and the stu- 
dent is paid for his labor while learning a vocation. A 
boy there can earn .$1000 in four years. His expenses for 
that time are but $(S00. x\nd as Professor Fish says, par- 
ents whose children need the training most, cannot afford 
to make an investment of $600 in each child. 

At the Cincinnati University the part-time system is 
practiced. A student studios in school one week and the 
next he works in a regular machine shop or factory in 
that city on a wage and under the direction of regular 
craftsmen. The Principal, Professor Schneider, reports 
that a boy can earn $2000 in six years by this half-time 
work, which is five times his expenses. He also says that 
the demand for training associated with remunerative la- 
bor and a course of study is so great that three thousand 
applicants for admission had to be turned down because 
of lack of room. That the demand for self-help in getting 
an education was practically limited only by the number 
of young men and young women in Cincinnati. What is 
true of Cincinnati is true in every city and every town 
and hamlet. The most significant fact today is that men 
of all classes have come to look upon education as a thing 
that will better their conditions ; something that will en- 
able them to live fuller lives, pay their bills, and become 
better members of society. 

♦Examples of Industrial Education. By F. M. Leavitt. 

40 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



CHAPTER 4 

EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS FORESHADOWING 
THE NEW SYSTEM 

THE CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL 

So pronounced are the demands of thousands of minds 
of high capacity to become of greater social and industrial 
value and to have a hand in the lines of employment that 
promise advancement, that many men of foresight seeing 
the financial gain in this large endless field, have invested 
thousands, and even in one case several millions, of capi- 
tal, and have employed the highest talent to cope with 
this immense virgin field of education. 

So minute and exacting are the demands of industry 
for skilled labor, trained engineers, expert electricians, 
agriculturists, salesmen, accountants, advertisers, story 
Avriters, market gardeners, insurance and real-estate 
agents, architects, construction superintendents and a 
vast number of railroad, building trade and mechanic art 
specialists, that these Correspondence Schools have under 
the private-capital-profit incentive developed a most mar- 
velous system of technique, text-books, displays, iocal 
agencies, and methods of instruction, all of which makes 
our FREE School System measure as a mole-hill to this 
mountain of exactitude and efficiency. 

And while these schools demand large scholarship fees 
and are making the man at the bottom of his career pay 
dearly for his start, yet their results are so prolific in 
meeting industrial demands that the price is gladly paid 
and of course the Corporation School is making millions 
on this public necessity. The public won't do it, a Cor- 
poration does it and reaps a harvest of many hundred- 
fold. The public school is spending millions more in 
teaching rudiments, while the Corporation with business 
frugality and sagacity is teaching practically all the tech- 
nical, commercial, literary and art knowledge needed in 
the business and everyday life of our country. This shows 

41 



NATURAL KDUCA'riON 



conclusively that the administration of the one is a public 
byword for inefficiency and waste, while the other is one 
of the moS)t completely organized structures known to the 
business world with every detail so thoroly worked out 
that every scientific phase of every large vocation or 
industry is taught so that the average man can put it all 
into actual practice and thus increase his chances many- 
fold for success. 

These are the schools that are making the Designers-, 
Electrical Engineers, Draftsmen, Superintendents of 
Power and Lighting Plants, Chief Engineers, Chief Elec- 
tricians, Substation and Switchboard Operators, Wiremen, 
Signal Maintainers, Dynamo Tenders, Foremen of Foun- 
dries, Plumbing Mainifai'turing, Machine Shops, Steel 
Mills, Building Material Factories, and a vast number of 
producing organizations of Capital. Students of these 
schools become expertly trained for some particular trade, 
industry or profession, which has a distinct object in view 
and the training moves toward that object in a straight 
path. They teach, as all other schools should do, the 
theory and practice, the knowing and doing about the 
world of production. They place a man above the fear of 
WANT and give him hope of increasing prosperity as he 
advances in life. It is this technical education that gives 
welfare to millions and makes for the progress of civili- 
zation. They are schools of actual business, actual results 
and actual need. 

One of these schools in Pennsylvania has an enrollment 
of over two million, has home-office buildings covering 
five acres, has 2500 employees, has 280 courses of technical 
study and all the text-books to instruct with the most per- 
fect exactness of detail and has in thousands of cases in- 
creased the earning power of typical students $128.58 per 
month. Reports on 27,000 typical students show 14,990 
now receiving $1500 a year or more. 2451 receiving $2500 
or more; 413 receiving $5000 or more; 20 receiving $10,- 
000 or more; and 8 with annual incomes of $25,000 or 
more. Who can point with pride to such a showing of 
any present public school? 

42 



WITFIOrT TAXAIIOX 



TRADE SCHOOLS 

In his report for 1910 the United States Commissioner 
of Education saj^s : 

"In general, there may be said to be three 
types of industrial trainiiig: 1. Complete trade 
training, in which the effort is made to graduate 
finished mechanics or skilled workers capable of 
doing journeyman's work and earning journey- 
man's wages. 2. Intermediate or preapprentice 
trade training, in which it is sought to shorten 
the period of apprenticeship or to give skill and 
intelligence preparatory to industrial occupation. 
3. Industrial improvement or supplementary in- 
struction for those already engaged in industrial 
pursuits. 

"The number of vocational schools in 1910 was 
195. * * * In only 41 schools is it possible to 
learn a trade completely; in 120, many varieties 
of apprentice work are offered for the student's 
choice; in 58 schools is furnished what is known 
as Continuation Training, which is intended to 
give higher efficiency to journeymen of inferior 
grade or to fit the most skillful workmen for fore- 
manships. ' ' 
A high authority says about our Technical Training 
schools that they are "utterly inefficient". That many of 
our states have no vocational schools at all. Germany 
Avith half our population has 12,000 technical schools 
teaching a million and a half students. We have a beg- 
garly 195 schools including several manual training high- 
schools with scarcely 50,000 students. Thousands of per- 
sons in sore need of industrial education must go without 
or resort to the correspondence or other private concern. 
But, as has already been stated, we have a few of most 
excellent experimental and real trade schools which ought 
to be sufficient to leaven the whole loaf. Probably the 
most efficient is the one at Worcester, Mass. At this Trade 
School they make wood-turne'i -oods, rough foundry 

43 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



work, parts of machines and some small machinery, all 
for sale. It trains only machinists; pattern-makers, car- 
penters and cabinet-makers. It is under a Board of Trus- 
tees elected by the City Council, and is supported by t^e 
city and state. 

At the Milwaukee Trade School for Boys they train in 
Pattern-making, Tool-making:, for Machinist, in Carpen- 
try, Woodworking, Plumbing and Gasfitting. The courses 
are for two years of 52 weeks except Plumbing, Avhieh is- 
for one year. About "one-fourth of the student's time i.« 
devoted to academic instruction incidental to his trade.'' 
Their mathematics is SHOP Arithmetic, SHOP Algebra, 
SHOP Geometry and SHOP Trigonometry. Notice there 
is no waste of time on the UNSHOP kind. "The school 
does not claim to turn out journeymen mechanics," says 
its Prospectus. "Its aim is to instruct its students thoroly 
in as short a time as possible, in all the fundamental prin- 
ciples and in the practice of the trade in question, so that 
they may upon graduation possess ability and confidence 
and be of immediate practical value to their employers 
and receive a fair remuneration at once." "A special 
feature of all the classroom work consists in adapting it 
as nearly as possible to the special requirements of the 
various trades." "The cost of maintaining this school is , 
approximately two hundred and twenty-five dollars per 
year for each pui>il. " Boys must be 16 years of age for 
admission. Tuition is free between the ages of 16 and 20, 
but students are charged for materials used. 

In the Trade School for Girls the Trades offered are 
Dressmaking, Millinery, Applied Art and Design and 
Household Science. The AIM of this school is in the o.^a^t 
wording as given above for the Boys' Trade School and 
it "does not claim to turn out experienced workers". 
Girls enter at 14 and may complete the courses in about 
two years. Three-fifths of the time is spent in actual shop 
practice. 

Inasmuch as the Prospectus does not state that the stu- 
dents receive pay for their salable products, a letter to- 

44 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



Supervisor C. F. Perry gave the following information in 

reply : 

"In reply, will state that while these two 
schools are administered under a three-tenths 
mill tax, every problem given to every pupil is 
based upon commercial methods. A resolution 
pa.ssed by the Board of School Directors several 
years ago reads as follows: 'Resolved, That the 
products of the Schools of Trades for Boys and 
Girls may be offered for sale in the open market 
at current market prices.' Our Girls' Trade 
School performs work in Dressmaking and Mil- 
linery for customers. Our machine shop is build- 
ing, at the present time, one hundred lathes to be 
used by the public schools of this city. Band 
saws, jointers, grinders, gas engines and other 
tools also are built upon order. In our Pattern- 
making and Woodworking Departments we also 
do order work." 

TRADE SCHOOLS ON PART-TIME SYSTEM 

The Cincinnati University was the first to introduce the 
Part-Time plan of co-operating with certain manufactur- 
ers in the city in placing the University students into the 
regular factories alternate weeks. One week in school 
and one week in the shop doing regular machine work un- 
der the eyes of the foremen of departments. Boys are 
thus paired off so that the same machine is run all the 
time. For this shop work they get 10 cents an hour with 
an increase of one cent every six months. The course of 
study is six years, and during that time. Dean Herman 
Schneider says that they earn about $2000 or five times 
their school expenses. School runs eleven months a year. 
The demand for this pay-system is so great that thou- 
sands are turned aAvay for lack of room. 

So widespread has been the interest in this plan that 
other cities have adopted similar methods. Fitchburg, 

45 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



Mass.,* was the first to take up the plan in 1908. Sixteen 
manufacturing concerns joined in co-operating with the 
Fitchburg High School Industrial Department. Of the 
40 school weeks per year, 20 are spent in the shop of a 
manufacturer where the student is paid 10 cents an hour 
the first year, 11 cents the second, and the third year I21/2 
cents an hour. "This compensation is a strong induce- 
ment for the boy to continue in the course. He can go to 
school and at the same time earn as much as he could get 
from ordinary employment in stores and ofBces. " When 
there is a vacation the shops furnish work for all those 
who wish it. During July and August those desiring to 
choose the industrial course are given a trial in the shops 
and if the i3upil likes the work and shows aptitude for the 
trade he continues with the course. A practical shopman 
is director of the course and all that the employers insist 
upon is that "the course be practical". The choice in the 
course are of the following trades : Machinist, Drafts- 
man, Moulding, Pattern-making, Sawmaking, Sheet-Metal 
Avork. 

CONTINUATION SCHOOLS 

Boston and Cincinnati have what are known as Con- 
tinuation Schools to piece out what our Public Schools 
do not do or try to do. In Boston a School Committee 
^ntli the co-operation of Merchants hired a room and or- 
ganized a Dry Goods, a Shoe and Leather, a Preparatory 
Salesmanship and a Banking School. In each of these the 
technical subjects and the materials and their sources and 
manufacture were studied so as to give the employee a 
fifteen-week course of practical knowledge of his daily 
work. These courses are repeated twice a year for 15 
weeks each. They have proven a very valuable addition 
to the efficiency of those already employed who made good 
help but were mentally unfitted to give the employer the 
best results. These schools are taught by a teacher from 
the Public Schools and by heads of departments and ex- 
perts. 

*Bulletin No. 50, 1913, U. S. Bureau of Education. 

46 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



The Cincinnati Continuation Schools run 48 weeks a 
year and are for machine-shop apprentices who attend but 
four hours per week and get for the time the usual wage 
paid by their employer. They have blue-print reading, 
freehand and mechanical drawing, practical mathematics, 
shop, science and theory, English, spelling, commercial 
geography and civics. The Ohio law of 1911 authorizes 
School Boards to establish Continuation Schools. There 
are also Continuation Schools for girls- in which they take 
orders for dresses and millinery and are paid out of the 
receipts from these goods. 

EVENING SCHOOLS 

Nearly every city now has its regular Night Schools in 
which children and adults are taught special practical 
courses and cultural studies which are supposed to adapt 
the student to his industrial environment and increase his 
ability to earn his living and be a better producer. But 
such schools are generally poorly attended. They, too, 
lack the facilities to illustrate the work of the classroom. 
They are taught as a rule hy inexperienced teachers taken 
from the day schools of the city who of course are not 
versed in the Crafts or Trades into which the pupil is 
likely to merge. 

These schools in themselves show that we are piecing 
out what is wholly an inefficient system and, too, that our 
industrial system is so mad after the dollar that it must 
use our boys and girls to run automatic machinery and 
thus save high-priced labor. The Night School is a blot 
upon our civilization and should not find a place in any 
well-organized society. The night is no time for a brain 
in a weary body to be active. Neither is a schoolroom 
with nothing but benches an inviting place for industry 
to be taught. 

47 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



THE GARY (INDIANA) SCHOOL PLAN* 

With school open twelve months in the year, open on 
Saturdays for voluntary work by pupils, and evenings for 
Continuation School work as well as for social and recre- 
ational activities, the use of the Gary school plant is more 
in accord with the needs of evei;y community. The Gary 
system is a step forward, but with that step there is asso- 
ciated the traditional CONTROL that is altogether un- 
democratic. 

There is a most perfected and equipped set of school 
buildings, from the two large ones — the Froebel and 
Emerson — down to the smaller ones, even to the portable 
structures for special work, on about 13 acres of ground. 
There are the shops equipped with modern machinery with 
regular skilled mechanics as teachers, and nearly all of 
which arc self-supporting and some a source of revenue 
to the schools. There are the gardens, playgrounds, houses 
for pet animals built by the students, tennis courts, sand- 
pits, wading pools, trees, and almost every conceivable 
kind of apparatus made by the pupils for the playgrounds. 
There is the Auditorium where the children are at certain 
hours engaged in dramatics, singing, listening to the 
player-piano or illustrated talks, or looking at the mov- 
ing pictures. Charts, maps, specimens and other mate- 
rial are found in the corridors. In the laboratories, older 
pupils are showing younger ones apparatus and processes 
or specimens, or teachers are conducting classes. 

There are many new innovations most highly commend- 
able. The grade pupils and high-school pupils are all in 
the same buildings and high-school work begins down as 
low as the fifth grade. Work is fitted to the bent and age 
of the pupil regardless of old customs. Teachers are all 
specialists. Even the common school branches are divided 
between two teachers for each class. The schedule of 
classes is so arranged that half the day of seven hours is 
given to regular studies and the other half to special ac- 
tivities. By alternating a classroom period with an active 

♦Bulletin No. 18, 1914. United States Bureau of Education. 

48 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



period the old plan of ''confining" pupils in their seats 
for three hours is entirely replaced by a more natural one. 
The desks have vises attached and the tops are removahle 
so that with the stool for a seat they can l)e changed into 
a workbench or moved outdoors or into the corridors for 
such Avork as sketching, copying, etc. Repairs, making 
new furniture for the school, keeping the accounts, print- 
ing and making notebooks, cuts for illustrations, and re- 
binding books for the large library, are all done within the 
school by both teacher and pupils. It is a beehive of in- 
dustry and interest. It eliminates the misfits, j^rovides 
for the mentally and physically weak, for those that are 
defective, retarded or exceptionally bright, and all are 
promoted by subjects. Thus the flexibility of the Gary 
schools is nearly ideal. 

THE BIG OMISSION 

With all this admirable organization of educational 
forces in the kinds of schools described above and the un- 
deniable fact that they all are more or less a social neces- 
sity, yet it cannot be said that any of these schools pre- 
pare any one for the exercise of his civic duties and the 
just relations of men. 

What is Industry without an equalizing all-together 
control? Only the football and speculative arena of the 
strong. To a workingman, preparation for government 
and control is as essential as learning hov*- best to pro- 
duce, else what wall become of his earnings? Society 
fails and decays the moment it tolerates any legislative 
act that gives to the strong any privilege to extort from 
the earnings of the weak. Probably the most important 
function of a rehabilitated educational system will be its 
power to place the CONTROL of the equitable distribu- 
tion of Avealth in the hands of the WEALTH PRO- 
DUCERS and to eliminate the social parasite. And this 
can be done only by the PRACTICE of government. But 
to practice government the government makers must get 
together under some such plan as the School Town offers. 

49 



NATURAL EDT'CATION 



The Correspondence School is the least fit to perform this 
all-important function with its scattered students. It fits 
men to earn higher salaries under a control that rules mar- 
kets and production in its own interests. It stands for 
Aveaith concentration and keeping the skilled engineer or 
foreman ignorant of the first principles of democratic rule 
The Trade Schools are equally as weak in the teaching of 
civics, tho they all claim to give such courses. They are 
easily manipulated so as to be simply mills to grind out 
better profit-makers. What we need above all in any 
justice-loving civilization is civic-men as well as laboring- 
men. Men who can make and understand a just law as 
well as make an honest suit of clothes or an honest loa^ 
of bread. 

The Gary system, wdth all its beautiful surroundings 
and remarkable appointments for industrial efficiency and 
fitting the school to the child, has beneath it all the hid- 
den, fist of control giving out a servile training of how tc 
make a dollar and incidentally of how to make more easily 
utilized lal)or for the near-by Steel Mills. Its control i? 
vested in a Board of Education, and, like all such Board?. 
is politically appointed or elected. The cost of the build- 
ings up to 1914 is $620,528. Of this cost $332,500 is a 
bonded indebtedness which is proof that the people of 
Gary do not own their school plant. The majority of the 
''stock" belongs to the Bondholders and of course that 
carries with it the power of control. 

The only hint at self-government at Gary is a student 
organization known as the Council of Boyville which is 
an imitation of a City Council. This Council passes ' ' ordi- 
nances" with no referendum vote of the student body, 
thus following the old system of law-making by the few. 
But none of these "ordinances" become effective as a 
part of the organic law of the school. They are "play 
laws" and therefore worthless as a means of discipline. 
While the mechanism of this school is much like a great 
playhouse with every device to secure and hold the inter- 

50 



WITHOrr TAXATIOX 



<?st, thus reducing the discipline to the minimum, still the 
principle of "master" teachers and obedience to adults 
is there. They do not allow SELF-GOVERNMENT. 

THE JUNIOR REPUBLIC* 

Many are not aware that since 1894 a most highly dem- 
ocratic and largely self-supporting educational experi 
ment has been in operation at Freeville, New York, and 
that from this father institution at least six others have 
been established in the East, one in California and one in 
England. These actual practice schools in both self-gov- 
ernment and student self-support come the nearest to a 
practical solution of the educational problems of the pres- 
ent and are the forefathers of what the future educational 
system of the whole country will be if we are to have a 
self-perpetuating civilization based upon equality of op- 
portunity and civic justice. 

The greatest achievement in education will be the com- 
bination of academic study with productive industry un- 
der democratic control. The Junior Republic is the near- 
est approach to this achievement. They are town democ- 
racies in which every student is a citizen of the Republic 
and has a voice in the-making of the laws and in the elec- 
tion of the officers to execute those laws. They have a 
legislative body which at the start was a double one as 
our Federal Congress is yet. But they soon found the 
weakness of a double-house legislative body as well as it-s 
inelasticity and obstructiveness to the will of the major- 
ity; so they discarded the Senate and now have a single 
legislative body that responds to the electorate quickly, 
as it should. 

These Towns have been built largely by donations and 
student labor and contain nearly every sort of business 
found in any modern town and, besides, a farm on which 
to grow most of the food and raw materials. There are 
banks, hotels, laundries, plumbing shops, printing plants, 
carpenter shops, stores, bakeries, shoe-blacking parlors, 

*Citizens Made and Remade. By William R. George. 

51 



NATURAL KDUOATIOX 



tailoring, dressmaking and millinery shops, and in fact 
all industry needed to supply local demands and often to 
fill orders from the outside. Students are hired in what- 
ever line of employment they choose to follow as a future 
business and are paid for their labor. All labor is of com- 
mercial value and products are sold. The farm has been 
improved and the buildings have all been built by stu- 
dent labor under direction of skilled farmers and me- 
chanics. 

The motto of the Freeville Republic is "Nothing Avith- 
out Labor." And whether the student comes from a rich 
or poor family he or she must labor and be a productive 
unit in the busy hive." There are no drones, no nonpro- 
ducers, no vagrants. Obedience to law is well-night uni- 
versal. The courts and police, both wholly student-citi- 
zens, have very little to do. Boys from the vilest slum 
districts with the most savage-like habits of doing dare- 
devil deeds or boys from rich parents who have been sent 
home from other schools as incorrigible, here become the 
best citizens under the influence of self-government and 
the responsibilities of making a living by honest toil. 

Two features of these Republics^ however, have oper- 
ated to lessen their usefulness and their more rapid ex- 
tension. The first is the small amount of land they had 
at their disposal on which to develop more lucrative lines 
of production and more diversified vocations ; and the 
other is that they have no co-ordinating control that ce- 
ments them together under one general directing head. 
Each stands alone under the direction of a Board of Trus- 
tees, each of which manage and plan as they think best. 
And while they have done many things to develop the 
natural aptitude of the student and to prove that our 
Public School system is far behind it as a social regener- 
ating system as well as a far more natural system of edu- 
cation, yet they have no interrelations with one another 
which would add greatly to their powers of development 
and growth. In other words, they are individualistic in 
the way they are founded and supported and not self-gen- 

52 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



erating and self-supporting. Tlley are too limited in siz6 
and scope of work to meet the tremendous demands for 
such institutions. Every county of our populous states 
should have such an industrial school toAvn. But it will 
require at least two sections' of land to provide the soil 
and building sites. 

The Freevilie Republic started with but 58 acres of land 
and now has about 248 acres and has never been able to 
provide for more than 400 student-citizens at a time. 



CHAPTER 5 
THE SCHOOL TOWN SYSTEM WITHOUT TAXATION 

This is an age all aglow with rapid change. New insti- 
tutions are being forged almost daily to replace the old. 
New horizons and new points of view are appearing and 
men are becoming more united and more submissive to 
the generalized w^orld-views resulting from a better un- 
derstanding of the laws of universal harmony and agree- 
ment. 

And knowing that all movements during the past ages 
that have persisted have been those supported by Schools, 
it has become evident that if we are to have real Democ- 
racy, real Freedom, real Justice, and real Brotherhoods of 
Men, we can have it all only thru the medium of the 
School. Therefore, to develop a rational system of edu- 
cation, the writer hasi concluded that the segregation of 
our youths at the age of puberty is all-important for their 
w^elfare as well as for the welfare of parents and society. 
At this crucial period of life, there is a merging into the 
vicissitudes and the mechanism of the community life and 
we should provide such a transitional institution as will 
prepare the individual to play his part with the least 
social loss and for the highest attainment of his mind. 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



THE SCHOOL TOWN SYSTEM TO RATIONALIZE 
EDUCATION 

The School Town System contemplates the founding of 
real towns devoted entirely to school purposes and located 
away from all city influences upon tracts of land of a 
thousand or more acres of productive soil on which to 
grow all the raw materials possible to grow in one locality 
and also to inaugurate the various special and general ag- 
ricultural lines of production. Then in the center of the 
toAvn plat, about a hollow square of perhaps ten acres, the 
simple buildings are to be erected by student labor for the 
several mechanical and academic departments associated 
there also with those devoted to the commercial and man- 
ufacturing industries. There is also to be a large assembly 
hall in the central administrative building and special 
rooms for courts, police quarters and all the civic depart- 
ments considered necessary to the proper government of 
any advanced community in which persons and property 
must be protected. For living quarters there are to be 
cottages upon the home-like plan on large airy lots facing 
on T^dde streets. And besides all this there are ta be spe- 
cial buildings even tho small for the personal service em- 
ployments as tailors, barbers, cleaning and pressing, and 
shoe polishing, for the various farm purposes and for cold- 
storage, telephone exchange, post-office and bank. 

A MINIATURE DEMOCRACY 

Such a School Town should be a miniature world of 
Democracy with all the problems of social adjustment to 
be worked out under the same struggle to make a living 
as in the outside world with the one large exception, that 
opportunity will be open to all alike and special privileges 
to none. Since this will be an aggregation of coordinating 
agricultural specialties with manufacturing school-shops 
or specialized factories in which all grow or make things 
to sell for self-support, it will be found that they will first 

54 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



supply the local ''trade" which will provide all the ex- 
periences of making, delivering and consuming found in 
any well organized community. 

The parts of machinery, implements or other products 
to be made will largely be those which outside manufac- 
turers suggest to be made and which they can use and 
will buy as is done at the Mihvaukee and Worcester Trade 
Schools and at the Junior Republics. In fact these schools 
are to be fully correlated with existing industry and in 
no sense to become competitive but rather exceedingly 
helpful and in fact indispensable to industry. Why should 
not a near-man at fourteen make soap, ink or baking poAv- 
der as well as a nearer-man at twenty-one? Why be so 
arbitrary with nature as to deny our custom-made "under 
age" persons industrial rights when done in their own 
interests and in the interests of society as well? Why 
waste the seven years from 14 to 21 in doing "jobs" and 
learning rudiments when they can learn a vocation and 
earn their living at the same time and reach manhood Avith 
exact knowledge about a definite calling that will always 
keep them from penury? When it comes to War our 
blind custom vanishes. Suddenly "boj^s" become "men". 
Over two-thirds of the Civil War armies on both sides 
were MEN under twenty-one. But when those heroes re- 
turned home, they returned as "infants" under our laAvs 
without a vote and under the rule of parent and teacher. 
This inconsistency can be blotted out only by the intro- 
duction of the Biological basis of Education which will 
allovv' each individual to develop and mature unhampered 
by any age absurdity, by fixed courses of study, by lim- 
ited time to graduate, by an inflexible, iron-clad custom 
or rule that defeats the natural aptitude or the principles 
of Evolution as applied to the human mind. Many a 
youth is capable at eighteen to 'assume high responsibility 
and hold it. Others develop late in the twenties or not 
till forty. The school must meet this natural inequality. 

55 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



NATURAL ADJUSTMENT OF THE SEXES 

While this plan does not contemplate the separation of 
the sexes, it does provide that they shall commingle under 
their own rule and be removed from all adult rule. One 
of our greatest evils is the economic and custom barriers 
we throw about the normal mixing of the sexes. Rarely 
do Ave find parents who are properly mated. And one 
large cause of this is the restricted choice that fell to the 
lot of most of them. Our near-adults are thrown into the 
whirlpool of unmitigated industry, leaving their mating 
to mere chance. And because some work and some are 
idle, some have learned a real vocation and a vast number 
have not, we find that the road thru the Married State is 
decidedly rough and lined with thorns and thistles. 

When ALL WORK and ALL are producers at an insti- 
tution where riches and idleness cease to be misguiding 
incentives, the sexes will have Natural Freedom and will 
mate in strict accordance to natural aptitudes, and natural 
promptings. When a girl has been taught industry in- 
stead of society fads, how to care for the home instead of 
how to play some smart role in a club, and the boy learns 
some settled lucrative vocation that will anchor him to his 
home with a steady income, who dare deny that there Avill 
be a new alignment of the sexes, a new spirit in the home 
and a new era of married felicity? From our haphazard, 
discouraging methods, we are unable to comprehend from 
our experiencesi Avhat a real normal association of the 
sexes would do to correct the alarming family relations 
we now suffer. 

Belated marriage would also become historic, could both 
male and female earn a "nest-egg" while attending their 
institution of learning and on leaving each have a savings 
account of even a few hundred to start a home and the 
business for which they have been thoroly prepared. At 
this School Town there will be a reversal from idleness 
and spending to industry and saving. Earnings cannot 
be frittered away on catch-penny or habit-making arti- 

56 



WITHOUT TAXATIflX 



cles, for they will not be there. ■ With every inducement 
to thrift there will be every inducement to save and pre- 
pare for the future family and future business success. 
And any one can see that all this desirable control cannot 
be secured in any city or town with all its commercial 
allurements to spend. 

EDUCATION WITHOUT TAXATION 

As Lincoln said, "As each man has one mouth to be fed, 
and one pair of hands to furnish food, it was probably 
intended that that particular pair of hands should feed 
that particular mouth, ' ' may we not add with equal truth 
that "since every man has one brain to be fed, and one 
pair of hands to furnish food, that it was probably in 
tended that that particular pair of hands should feed that 
particular ])rain"? 

In 1912 the Boys' Trade School of Milwaukee built 100 
lathes to distribute to other schools" of that city. They 
also make parts of machines, electrical and wood work 
for sale. In the Girls' Trade School, dresses, underwear 
and millinery goods are made to order and sold. The boys 
and girls are paid for their labor while learning. At Gary, 
Indiana, as we have seen, "law infants" make and do 
nearly everything needed by their schools. At Worcester 
and Beverly, Mass., boys earn about a thousand dollars 
during their four-year course. In the Cincinnati Univer- 
sity they earn about $2,000 during a six-year course w^ork- 
ing part-time in co-operating factories. At the Junior 
Repulilics everybody earns his or her living and are build- 
ing up a substantial industrial school-town in which to 
work out the problems of self-government and self-sup- 
port. 

If youthful mind and muscle can do all this, is it a 
dream to say that they can build their own school build- 
ings, make and install most of their machinery and appli- 
ances, in fact, do nearly all that is required to equip them- 
selves with their own educational institutions and get an 

57 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



experience in doing it all that is of prime importance to 
their after-success in life? Also in thus building, would 
there not be a pride and interest in such school property 
not developed by the bond-contract system of exploiting 
taxpayers? Would we not also leave off all the showy,, 
awe-inspiring trappings and build for strict utility? 

Slowly but surely the Principle, "the maintenance of 
both student and school should, so far as feasible, depend 
upon commercial products made by student labor", is 
finding its way into the public mind ; and the energy now 
wasted on motor cars, loafing, following athletics and dis- 
sipation will be utilized in the future school to restore 
society to a normal equilibrium and wipe out the abnor- 
mal idle class. 

With the heavy school tax and the yearly keep of the 
big boy or girl, taken from the shoulders of the parent, 
to what heights could the family not reach in providing 
comforts and convejiiences and even luxuries now un- 
dreamed of? EDUCATION WITHOUT TAXATION is 
not a DREAM ; it is to be one of the big achievements of 
the twentieth century ; and with its advent, perhaps more 
than to any other factor, will it advance the cause of so- 
cial freedom and remove human misery. 

HIGH SCHOOLS REDUCED IN NUMBER 

By the School Town system there would be an economy 
in the gradual reduction of the number of High Schools 
to about one in each county instead of from five to twenty 
as now provided. The average county, except those con- 
taining large cities, in our most populous states, has but 
forty to fifty thousand inhabitants. Of this population, 
not over 10 per cent are of the ages ranging from 14 to 18. 
And were these four or five thousand removed from the 
abnoniial influences and surroundings peculiar to our 
overcrowded cities to a School Town, a new revitalizing 
era would dawn to reclaim our decaying civilization. It 
would settle to stay settled most of the conditions that 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



lead to vice, crime and idleness and solve the question of 
adverse family influences. It would be a large factor in 
reducing our serious urban populations and in renewing 
the ambitions of our youth to become allied with the in- 
dustries connected with the mine, field and forest. 

HOW FINANCED AND FOUNDED 

Nearly all of our advanced Educational Experiments 
have been financed by those members of society who have 
the means and the foresight to see the need of better ways 
of opening opportunity than by our Free School system. 
The lands for the seven Junior Republics in the Eastern 
States were all donated, in one case by the Lehigh Valley 
railroad. Tools, machinery and even second-hand clothes 
were generously sent from all over ea^h state and express 
companies carried quantities of everything free. 

But all the work of improving the land, making roads, 
fences, drainage, and building barns, cottages, offices, and 
installing machinery and, in fact, everything that was 
done at each Republic, was done by hired student labor. 
Once the plant was put upon a productive basis, then self- 
help and self-maintenance began which in large measure 
supported each Republic. These Republics are a big step 
forward and are the pioneers in giving us the empirical 
knowledge we needed to stimulate our confidence in the 
self-supporting and Paid-Student Schools. They have 
shown us how these schools can be started Avithout public 
funds. We are taxing ourselves millions to support pri- 
vate schools because they give us a measure of real prac- 
tical knowledge ; and if we can have schools that wall give 
us more nearly the ideal education, we will be willing 
again to contribute to them even more liberally. 

The School Town plan already has the first thousand- 
acre tract donated and it is expected that other donations 
of like size will follow when once the scope and design is 
understod and known. If lands already under cultiva- 
tion cannot be donated, the Association controlling this 
property will accept donations of any fertile unused or 

59 



NATURAL KDUCATION 



wild lands located anywhere just so they are not over two 
miles from a railroad. Corporations owning large tracts 
of stump or other lands not now in use but with the nat- 
ural advantages of good water, fuel and building mate- 
rials, will find that one of these schools located on a thou- 
sand acres in the midst of their properties will become the 
most effective advertisement for unsold lands. The Town 
would prove up all the qualities of soil, the healthfulness 
of the region, the possibilities of certain crops, and would 
bring to the region many productive resources that would 
be very helpful and a convenience to new settlers. It 
would be the trading point as w^ell as the place where mill- 
work for buildings and all the building ti-ade work could 
be found by the surrounding community. Buildings could 
be erected by the student labor for miles around. 

The income of the Town would come from many sources. 
From the dairy, food crops, sale of furs, poultry products, 
blooded stock, nursery stock, fruits, market gardens, 
would be steady incomes. With plenty of land at hand, 
every one can make a living. And under high culture 
a thousand acres of good soil would easily support four or 
five thousand persons. But the output of the factories, 
the building trades, the pu])lishing department, the mak- 
ing of toilet articles and family specialties, of confection- 
ery goods and many more are sources of possible large 
incomes. In fact, the incomes are practically limited to 
the number of products that can be made at any one place 
to advantage and to the equipment the Town can com- 
mand. 

Besides the incomes from labor products, it is planned 
to rent all cottages and sell concessions for any business 
to be run by any student for profit. Thus a Picture ShoAV 
would pay into the school treasury a certain per cent of 
its income, the students managing it would retain the 
balance. Stores, hotels, banks, bakeries, and other enter- 
prises managed by students for gain, would also pay to 
the Town a part of their profits. 

60 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF THE PROPERTY 
OF THESE SCHOOLS 

In order to place all the property of these School Towns 
into safe hands for TRUTH and for the ends of the Seven 
Principles herein f?iven, the INTERNATIONAL UNIVER- 
SITY xiSSOClATION was organized, which has quite a 
considerable membership of earnest people from all 
classes and the highest types of citizens. They include ex- 
Maj'ors, City Officials, Doctors, Lawyers, Manufacturers, 
Union Labor Officials, School Superintendents, High 
School Teachers and many more of the intellectual classes. 
The OBJECT of this Association, as stated in the Pre- 
amble of its Constitution, reads as follows: 

"First, to establish technical schools anywhere 
and with them all the means of broadening the 
educational facilities of all classes under condi- 
tions of an enlightened democracy ; and. Second, 
to unite these schools into a co-operative, inter- 
collegiate association based, first, upon the com- 
mon ownership of the property of said schools 
by the alumni and membership thereof; second, 
upon the sovereign authority of the alumni and 
membership of said association, and, third, upon 
uniform and interchangeable courses of study 
and methods of instruction and administration. 
"The membership of this Association shall con- 
sist of all graduates of recognized universities, 
colleges and technical schools, all donors, officers, 
instructors and graduates of said schools, and all 
other persons who may be solicited by duly ad- 
mitted members; but all members are required to 
subscribe to and endorse the Principles upon 
which said Association is founded." 
With this sound organization ready to take charge of 
the property and administer it in accord, with the seven 
Foundation Principles stated in Chapter 3, all donors who 
themselves are willing to endorse these Principles will be 
confident that their donations wall be used to the best in- 

61 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



terests of all concerned. All of our present schools, in- 
cluding our public schools, are founded upon class con- 
trol. Public schools are controlled by local Boards who 
modify the instruction and change the instructors in 
agreement with their whims and interests. There is no 
bond of unity or centralized control anywhere. Every 
University is a unit to itself with no definite relations to 
any other University. Every State has its own political- 
made school laws, requirements and methods of financing. 
No two are alike. Hence the reason for the many incon- 
gruities and lack of utility found in the education of our 
children and hence in the government that will not re- 
spond to the wishes of the majority. This heterogenity 
Avill never get anywhere, except to give educational con- 
trol to politics and the profiteering class. We must have 
a centralized, all-together control and unity of purpose 
before we can have a sound, natural educational system 
that will also respond to and perpetuate Demorcacy. 

THE UNIVERSITY SPIRIT FOSTERED BY THE 
SCHOOL TOWN 

In the most admirable wording in the speech by Presi- 
dent Wilson at the University of Paris, we get the high- 
est conceps of the Spirit of this Age as revealed and cham- 
pioned by the Universities of the world. He said: 

"The University spirit is intolerant of all the 
things that put the human mind under restraint. 
It is intolerant of everything that seeks to retard 
the advancement of ideals, the acceptance of 
Truth, the purification of life. And every uni- 
versity man can ally himself with the forces of 
the present time with the feeling that now at last 
the spirit of truth, the spirit to which Universi- 
ties have devoted themselves, has prevailed and 
is triumphant." 
But from the nat""T of the Control over our public and 
Sectarian schools there is little or none of the University 
Spirit in them. In fact they are intolerant to the Truth- 

62 



wuhout taxation 



seeking spirit of this age and hence the "rapid-fire criti- 
cism oi' a most searching order" coming from educational 
Icad'rs everywhere 

With this Control po thoroly intrenched, the outlook 
for releasing our schools from this bondage seems almost 
hopeless save thru a separate organization such as the 
School Town under the Constitutional checks of the In- 
ternational University Association. It is designed that 
the J^chool Town will have the genuine University Spirit 
and will therefore be the means of bringing to the masses 
of men that .freedom of mind and tolerant spirit needed 
for the advancement of ideals and the purification of life. 

THE CORRELATION OF INDUSTRY AND LABOR 

Every productive industry requires Materials and La- 
bor. While materials are comparatively easy to get, labor 
is difficult to control. And under present unnatural in- 
equalities and absurd conditions of obstruction to aspira- 
tions, we find labor in a most hopeless state of anarchy 
and waste. But few are fitted to their positions. Many 
are but half masters of their calling and millions are not 
prepared for anything in particular. Tliere is no correla- 
tion between labor and industry, no system, no unity of 
purpose, of agi'oenient or action, xind on account of all 
this, men who control large industries have had to sup- 
ply the demands of their enterprises by supplementary 
schools. Railroads have mechanical Apprentice Schools. 
Big Department Stores educate their clerks in salesman- 
ship. Telephone and Telegraph companies give free 
courses to their prospective employees. And were it not 
for these thorogoingly practical additions to our present 
lame educational facilities, industry would be hopelessly 
adrift and helpless in securing special trained men for the 
various processes of present-day production and distri- 
bution. 

These Corporation schools, however, are expensive and 
naturally have features of self-interest and lack of asso- 

63 



NATURAL KDUCATION 



ciatioii. Students become fastened to one industry with 
very little of associated knowledge one would get where 
many vocations are taught. They have a narrow point of 
view about everything. They do not become trained citi- 
zens or become interested in their government. 

"What is needed is a combination under one sunrpme 
control of all technical schools independent of but subject 
to the demands and advices of all industry. As members 
of the Association in control of these schools there must 
be included the manufacturer, merchant, mine owner, 
lumberman, ranch owner, and all who employ labor, to 
act as advisors on what is to be taught to fit workers for 
each special industry and to aid in getting the equipment 
to meet their demands. 

A school with such advice behind it and in which inter- 
est, thoroness, speed and efficiency permeates the whole 
atmosphere, Avill con)niand the constant respect and con- 
fidence of all employers of labor. And they Avill be only 
too glad to take all who are recommended from such a 
school at regular sldlled labor pay. When this alignment 
l)etween school and industry is accomplished, we will have 
an era not only of the highest productive power, but also 
of the highest social adjustment toward justice. 

EDUCATION BY ASSOCIATION 

One of the most fundamental values to a University is 
its broadening influence on every student because of the 
fact that so many departments of learning are associated 
together under the same management and are taught by 
a body of men who have also absorbed the broad view of 
every related knowledge there represented. If this is true 
of the University, it is true of any school of technology 
for that larger number of students who wish to fit them- 
selves for the general productive industries. With most 
of the specialties in agriculture, in mechanic arts, archi- 
tecture, manufacturing industries, publishing, building 
trades, banking, and many more of the everyday callings 
all going at the same time and place with art, method and 

C4 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



thoroness in evidence everywhere, one would absorb 
enough in such surroundings to make a full secondary 
course of training. Our present schools are lamentably 
limited in their scope and cannot be made otherwise as 
at present founded. They have little or none of the atmos- 
phere of doing and association about them. They are 
often almost as recluse as was the Middle-Age monastery 
and the teachers largely as forgetful of the rushing world 
about them of making and selling as the secluded Monks 
of old. 

Davenport states this indispensable educational princi- 
ple in this language :* 

"In a system of uliiversal education, the best 
results will always follow when as many subjects 
as possible and as many vocations as may be 
taught in the same school under the same man- 
agement are taught to the same body of students. 
Much of our education comes from association 
and the best of it comes in no other Avay. In no 
other way can a perfectly homogeneous popula- 
tion be secured. In no other way can universal 
efficiency be so closely combined with good citi- 
zenship. In no other way can activity and learn- 
ing be so intimately united. In no other way can 
morals and good government be so safely trusted 
to a free people." 

FITTING PERSONALITIES TO THEIR LIFE'S WORK 

Probably no more favorable and serviceable thing 
could be done for human happiness and for the best inter- 
ests of society than to adapt each individual to the occu- 
pation best suited to his talents, disposition, personality 
and special mental powers, it is a social loss to find a 
ditcher who could be a leader among men. A plowman 
who could be a great inventor. A deckhand who could 
be an admiral in the Navy. Or, on the other hand, a 
la^'yer who should have been an engineer, a preacher 

•Education for Efficiency. By E. Davenport, Illinois University. 

65 



NATURAL KDUCATION 



who should have been a farmer, and a vast number of 
such misfits. 

Our present school system seems to ignore altogether 
this immense field of adjustment. Nothing is done to 
make for industrial efficiency by well-known psychological 
tests to put the right person in the right place. There is 
nothing done to discover individual differences in exhaus- 
tion, ability to recover lost energy, ability to learn from 
practice, of attention, memory, judgment, feeling, imagi- 
nation, suggestion or emotion. 

Young people know very little about themselves and 
the parents often know less. A boy may have exceptional 
strength of one or another mental function Avhich, if left 
to family or relatives or to himself, may go unnoticed and 
be lost to the world. They do not know when their mem- 
ory, attention, will, intellectual apprehension, or sensiory 
perceptions are unusually developed which may give them 
special success in a certain vocation. Our entire scheme 
of education gives to the individual little chance to find 
himself. Unusual abilities are discovered by accident. 
Life 's callings are chosen by family traditions, by the suc- 
cess of others, by whims and chance, by imitation, by hope 
of quick gain, by laziness and desire to reap where others 
have sown. 

We have, too, the deplorable condition of virtually forc- 
ing coming industrial operatives to remain in the city 
because the instruction in city public schools does 
more to prepare one in general for city "jobs" than for 
the poss'ibilites of mining, farming, lumbering and 
other productive industries. Tn other words, distribu- 
tional and consumptional knowledge is emphasized to the 
minimizing of the productional. This of course tends to 
increase and hold city popiilations much to the interests 
of local trade and industries and incidentally to the in- 
creased values of real es>tate. We are sacrificing native 
talents and powers of mind upon the altar of greed 
and our schools are the accomplices in the shedding of this 
social blood. 



66 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



PITTING WORK TO LABOR. 

Not ouly should the school fit labor to work best adapt- 
ed to it, but it should also teach how Work can be best 
adapted to Labor. It is one thing to knoAv how to do 
a thing skillfully and perfectly in all its details and an- 
other thing to have the tools and work so adapted to the 
labor that the output in a given TIME is the maximum 
for the least labor expended. A mason may know ever 
so vv'ell how to lay a brick wall of a given dimension, but 
another mason of equal skill but trained to use a better 
trowel, to locate the brick to better advantage and to lay 
them with the least waste of motion, might lay the same 
wall in half the TIME. 

F. W. Taylor, the originator of the Scientific Manage- 
ment of Movement, foundf that after the study of the mo- 
tions and tools of masons and readjiisting both, 30 ma- 
sons without greater fatigue completed what by the old 
method required 100 masons to do. Also the total expense 
of the building was thereby reduced to less than half in 
spite of the increase of wages. 

In a factory where various materials had to be shov- 
eled, he found that by constructing shovels suited to the 
several materials and limiting the weight to about 21 
pounds per shovelful and alternated with Avell-arranged 
pauses that would give the largest amount moved with the 
least fatigue, that the average workman who previously 
shoveled but 16 tons per day, could now shovel 59 tons 
without greater fatigue. The outcome of this test was 
that only 140 men were needed to do the work which by 
the old method required 500 men. Wages were raised 66 
per cent and the expense of shoveling a ton decreased one 
half. 

These studies and practical demonstrations in many fac- 
tories has brot out a set of very definite deductions gov- 
erning movements which a modernized school should be 
prepared to apply and teach. This is a vast, largely un- 
explored field which needs much study to shorten the 

tPsychologry and Industrial Efficiency. By Hugo Munsterberg-. 

67 



NATURAL KDUCATIOX 



methods of applying labor to many occupations and pro- 
cesses yet untouched. And no better place could be de- 
vised than the School Town with all its interrelated in- 
dustries, to develop this Science of Motion as applied to 
all industry. 

SPONTANIETY AND INVENTIVENESS 

It can be seen that the whole plan of the School ToAvn 
is toward a full emancipation of the human mind so that 
there shall be no obstruction to its originality, freedom of 
growth or freedom of action. Every means should be 
used to stimulate inventiveness and the interest in the 
betterment of every department, machine, plant, animal 
or apparatus in the whole school. By becoming familiar 
with natural foi'ces at first hand, by living healthful lives, 
with interesting investigations and experiments going on 
all about them, with teachers imbued ^^'ith the principles 
of educational freedom, with plenty of food and clothing 
provided by their own hands, with uplifting and idealiz- 
ing entertainments to keep the mind happy and vigor- 
ously stimulated, w-hat else could be the result but the 
very highest development and accomplishment? 

Genius is found when least expected. Should an idea 
of value come to any mind, it should find a place where it 
could be tested to prove its worth and applicability. If 
an invention requiring drawings and models, the place 
should be at hand to make both without cost. And finally 
if the tests prove it a success, means of securing a patent 
should be provided with the least expense to the patentee. 
With all this opportunity opened at a school, how it would 
open Avide the gate to inventive genius and bring to the 
front many a mind that Avould otherwise lay dormant and 
helpless ! 

Commenting upon this phase of school work, James P. 
Monroe, President of the National Society for the Promo- 
tion of Industrial Education, says : 

"Manual Training in our public schools has 
confessedly serious deficiencies. There is little 

08 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



play for individuality. Shop-work should per- 
mit spontaneity and inventiveness and should em- 
phasize the constructural side and should connect 
itself in the closest way with industries of the 
neighborhood." 

UNFINISHED MENTALITIES 

Should the present generation correct itsi mistakes or 
mal^e amends for its sins of omission? Have unfinished 
minds the right to make themselves better social assets 
at such a seat of learning as the School Towii where their 
labor while at school will support them? The constant cry 
of industry is: "Give us more men who can do things, 
Avho are skilled craftsmen, who have the academic train- 
ing to follow directions and blue prints." If wanted why 
not supplied out of present unfinished men ? 

Huxley said with great wisdom, "The crucial test of a 
successful educational enterprise is catching capable men 
wherever they are to be found and turning them to ac- 
count." And the originators of the School Town plan 
have designed to put this far-reaching educational pro- 
gram into practice. 

The most pathetic reality in present society is to see 
good men struggling to support a family or dependents or 
even themselves, with an untrained brain as a mill-stone 
about their necks holding them down and making them 
the prey of those Avho take advantage of their ignorance. 

All men should be skilled, and if they were, menial 
labor and drudgery would be reduced almost to the zero 
point since they would invent means of doing it so easily 
that it would become almost inconsiderable. The reason 
we have so much drudgery is because we have so much 
ignorance. And all society wants a hundred fold more 
production. We seldom find a family whose wants are 
supplied. We all want more. Skilled labor only can 
give us more. Then why not have Repair Educational In- 
stitutions where anyone can go to add to his knowledge 

69 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



or learn a new vocation more nearly adapted to his nat- 
ural aptitudes? 

It is one of the purposes of the School To\ra to arrange 
facilites to take as many as possible of these unfinished 
men and women and let them earn and learn till they be- 
come proficient and capable. And when finished, place 
them in position in the outside world. 

Since they would be Special Studentsi remaining but a 
few months, it would not be well to give them the rights 
of full citizenship at the school, but reserve such rights to 
those who take regular courses. This then would keep 
the local government in the hands of the younger students 
vviiore it should be to encourage them and to make them 
feel the responsibility of self-government. 

TEACHERS NOT BOSSES BUT EMPLOYERS 

It can be readily seen from all we have said about the 
School Town as a busy hive of industry, with the buzzing 
and whirr of machinery, with the wide-spreading fields all 
alive with growth and activity, and with every favorable 
incentive to stir the aspirations of burning youth into ac- 
tion and accomplishment, that the attitude of the "teach- 
er" will be far from that of the traditional "school-mam" 
giving her threats and commands from an elevated ros- 
trum and thus repressing every atom of ambition within 
the yearning breasts before her. 

Every student-citizen being paid for his or her labor, 
becomes an "employee" and whoever directs the employ- 
ment must become an "employer" to have the proper 
incentive to get results. When a boy or girl is placed 
in the position of self-dependence, of working and earning 
or go hungry, a more powerful "reason why" is behind 
him or her than simply to do a thing because "one in au- 
thority" commanded it. "Nothing without Labor" will 
be the student-citizen unwritten law. And where there 
are no drones, no parasites to clog, waste, consume or be 
an example to live without work, would there not be a 

70 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



healthy public opinion favorable to workers having first 
consideration 1 

To be ''employers" all teachers in the technical de- 
partments must be practical craftsmen. There must be 
a real Carpenter to ''hire" the boys to do carpentry. An 
experienced Plumber to take the boys into a house the 
carpenter boys have built and do actual, salable plumbing. 
A long-experienced Dressmaker to employ and direct the 
girls in choosing materials, and in fitting and making gar- 
ments to sell on order. And an expert Baker to show 
his ' ' employees^ ' all the secrets of pleasing the palate and 
stomach. And because everything that is made or done 
is to be sold and the "employees" are to be paid for their 
labor, as Professor Elmer H. Fish of the Worcester Trade 
School says, there will be "Interest, speed, thoroness and 
efficiency. ' ' 

Those who have charge of the productive departments 
will 1)6 paid part salary and part in commissions on the 
products sold. This will place the superintending-teacher 
on his metal to "produce the goods." He must therefore 
be proficient in both the art and science of his profession 
and also a saver of waste in both time and materials. He 
will be inclined to work early and late the same as any- 
one in the real business world. He must meet the demands 
of the market for his goods and that requires just the 
quality needed to instill the same business acumen and 
frugality into the minds of his employees — the students. 
Under this actual-business method of employment, a large 
per cent of our public, private and sectarian teachers 
would not only starve but they would be totally incom- 
petent to meet the requirements. That is, they cannot fit 
anyone for actual business or production. 

FITTING TEACHERS FOR LIFE'S WORK 

Logically you come to the conclusion that the market 
for the kind of instructors needed for such an actual- 
business-training school is at present quite small, and it is. 
To find men and women, tutored under the old regime, to 

71 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



assume these tasks and master them, will be one of the 
difficult problems of the management. To overcome this 
deficiency, of necessity there must be a NORMAL TRAIN- 
ING department to prepare employing-business teachers 
to learn the art of DOING to meet social demands, and 
how not to "boss" students under .their own rule. 

From such teachers there cannot be a do-nothing caste 
wasting public funds. There will be no ''Aunt Julias" 
"teaching" a school twenty years under School-Board 
favoritism and leaving a neighborhood pervaded with 
shocking ignorance and helplessness. There will be no 
expensive "Normal Schools" not as "normal" as they 
might be under the direction of state political authorities 
and in which many of the instructors become "Text-Book 
Authors" who fatten on deals with Book Concerns. In- 
stead of teaching that the imagination is developed by 
"stories, fables and the classics", it will teach that reason 
and judgment as well as the imagination are strengthened 
far more by mechanism and the study of things. Instead 
of these Real-Normal Schools splitting hairs over techni- 
calities of Grammar, over the "fine art" of discipline, 
and magnifying the abstract, it will teach the technique of 
actual business, the art of leaving discipline alone, and in 
magnifying the concrete. 



TEXT-BOOKS 

Such Text-Books as are used will be those adapted to 
the needs of each department and Avill not be lumbered 
with a mass of unrelated subject matter just to make a 
"good seller". They will be written by men and women 
who have made a record in originality both in methods of 
teaching and in developing their departments and in meet- 
ing the keen demands of industry. These books will be 
published by student printers in the school printing plant. 
Of necessity they will be small booklets which can be 
modified at little expense to be abreast of new methods or 
discoveries in the industrial world. They will contain the 
mathematics, language and geography needed to under- 

72 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



Stand the processes with which they deal and that only. 

While doing actual business with the school bank, the 
student will absorb his banking, discount and interest. 
While trying to invent some improvement on the serving 
machine, he will naturally study up the history of that 
invention. Before the present Cotton Gin could be in- 
vented the history of the Whitney Gin and its simple prin- 
ciple had to be known. All the history worth knowing is 
that from the evolution of industry and industrial proc- 
esses and their efiPect upon the happiness and conduct of 
men. When students study government from the stand- 
point of the economic changes, they will see the philos- 
ophy of political games. When they practice government 
they will get applied history by association as a natural 
component part of the sociology needed to improve their 
government. They will get also their civics, their povrer 
over language, their logic, their rhetoric, their elocution, 
their quickness of thot and repartee and their dauntless 
control over self. They will care not "who run" at Bull 
Kun, but will become interesited in the historic forces 
which they can apply that have led to human betterment 
and achievement and will lead to still greater heights of 
social justice and redemption. In fact, they will be mak- 
ers of History. 

It will be seen that by this process of teaching, that 
purely academic work is largely discarded. It becomes 
incidental instead of the main function of the schoolroom. 
And at the same time it becomes applied information by 
which the real thing or process is thereby more easily com- 
prehended. We do not study arithmetic just to become 
a "prodigy in figgers, " but to use it as a means or tool 
to make workmanship exact and to prevent the waste of 
materials. And with a material objective in view or a real 
something to measure and compute, the dry-bones of pres- 
ent school mathematics vrould be resurrected into life and 
reality. And most of all, Arithmetic would be based upon 
Production as well as on Distribution and Consumption. 

73 



NATURAL KDrTCATION 



THE RIGHTS OF STUDENT-CITIZENS 

Article XII of the Constitution of the International Uni- 
versity Association enumerates six Rights of Student-Citi- 
zens which are probably as comprehensive as any brief 
comments that might be made upon them. They are as 
follows : 

"Section 1. Every student-citizen of said 
schools shall not be denied the right : 

"1. To self-government thru such a form of 
democratic government as the student bodies of 
said schools may devise for the conduct of each 
student, attendance to classes, for social duties, 
practical business and the protection of all stu- 
dent property while a student. 

"2. To self-support in labor largely related 
to and a part of his or her course of study and on 
products of commercial value. 

"3. To freedom from all sectarian influences 
or divisions of the student body into unrelated 
voluntary groups. 

"4. To an impartial, scientific psycho-physical 
and physiognomical examination on entrance or 
during his first term, to aid in deciding on his or 
her aptitude and physical fitness for a given vo- 
cation. 

"5. To a joint and equal ownership in the 
property of said Association upon finishing any 
course of study in any one of said schools, and 
with said 0A\Tiership the full rights' of member- 
ship in said Association. 

''6. To protection against unemployment and 
failure in business as an alumnus and to loss of 
money or abuse of his or her person while a stu- 
dent." 
It might be added that students have the right to 
visit their homes when their absence does not interfere 
with some particular work of the school, and also to re- 
ceive their parents or friends while at school. 

74 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



QUALIFICATIONS AND AGE OF STUDENT- 
CITIZENS 

Willingness to WORK is about all the entrance quali- 
fication required. The entrance examination will be di- 
rected to get the history of the applicant and to get his 
present mental and physical abilities. If he cannot read 
or write, some student can teach him enough to start and 
the rest he will get by contact with his work, the same as 
one learns to use a tool by practice. 

Wliile the School Town is designed primarily for both 
sexes above the age of 14 and below the age of 20, yet it 
has adopted the liberal policy of taking boys and girls, 
under extenuating circumstances, even as low as 8 years 
of age. Then, too, as already stated, provision will be 
made to take Unfinished Adult Mentalities even for a short 
period of training. To have the voting privilege one must 
be above the age of 14 and must have been a resident of 
the community three months. It has been designed that 
the Government of the School will be in the hands of that 
large majority between the age of 14 and 20. 

No one will be excluded except for lack of room, sex 
and other communicable diseases and unwillingness to 
subscribe to the Fundamental Principles upon which these 
schools are founded. 

These schools are to be instituted as much for the rich 
as for the poor. They are not to be asylums for any class, 
but red-blooded institutions for every class to become use- 
ful citizens and producers. 

THE SCHEDULE OF TIME 

Everybody should do their work upon a Schedule of 
Time. Punctuality and the methodical use of TIME are 
the big factors that make for success. And no school 
should fail to impress the importance of this element in 
every career of large achievement. As one uses his time, 
«o is he. If without system, his life is usually made up of 
waste and failure. Regularity in all we do should become 

75 



NATURAL KDUCATION 



a habit. For such a habit in eating, sleeping, working and 
playing will fill life to the brim with health, longevity and 
accomplishment. 

First of all, the School Town will inculcate the value of 
Time by so arranging its SCHEDULE that the whole com- 
munity will act with clock-like regularity in all its daily 
functions. Society as it is today runs riot in its waste and 
abuse of Time. And this is due to industry being irregu- 
lar and running by fits and starts to meet the demands of 
an orderless distribution of products. Society as a whole 
should be Scheduled and made to operate all its services 
and crafts with system and regularity. During the World 
War we had glimpses of how "Orders from Coal, Food 
and Railroad Administrators" were obeyed willingly in 
the interests of the general welfare at war. We all with 
one accord felt that this centralized authority was needed, 
was to our best interests, was the almightiness that gave 
us the victory. If this regulation of industry, of produc- 
tion and consumption was so efficient in war, why not ap- 
ply the same methods to regulate us in Peace? The War 
taught us that when we act together as one people, for- 
getting our party and sect divisions, that we are uncon- 
querable. Then l)y acting together in industry, in trade, 
in pleasures, in education, in government all on Scheduled 
Time, what a w(U'ld of waste and disaster, fear and worry 
would we eliminate ! 

SCHOOL NEVER CLOSED 

One of the unaccountable features of our present school 
system is the rule that there shall be a large Vacation dur- 
ing the summer months just while Nature is lavish with 
all her lessons of growth, leaf-beauty and wonderful pro- 
ductions of flower and fruitage. Just when the Book of 
Nature is wide open for observation, our children are 
turned upon the paved, dirty streets to waste their time 
in undirected "play". This is a grave mistake and at the 
School To%vn will be corrected by never closing the 
school. AVe do not "close" our cities, factores, or rail- 

76 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



roads in the real world, then if our youth are to get into 
touch with life as it is, they must have the same experi- 
ence they will find in the "outer" life. 

What all our schools need is a Constructive Play and 
not the Destructive sort we now have. A child will be 
far more interested in a play that benefits him than in 
one that develops his baser instincts. Then too Play 
should be evenly distributed thruout the whole year. 
"All work and no play" is as detrimental to mental and 
physical development and growth as haphazard, wasteful 
play. At the School To'v\ti every day will bring forth its 
time for joyous play. And while the great National 
Gamesi will not be eliminated, they wall be discouraged as 
great betting orgies and combinations to control Pleasure 
for inordinate gain. 

PUBLIC MEDICAL AID 

For the highest efficiency to a community like these pro- 
posed Towns, every one should be kept well. It evidently 
would be a mistaken policy to allow the "Fee System" to 
take advantage of any one under stress of sickness or 
necessity. Instead of waiting for the patient to get very 
sick before he calls a doctor, the doctor will be hired on 
salary to be the judge of when medical assistance is 
needed and to direct all measures to keep the community 
healthy. Sickness is more of a public calamity than it is 
to the individual. The moment a producer cannot work, 
society loses the products of his labor. Also society by 
the Fee System is often the cause of epidemics and indi- 
vidual sicknessi ; if it is the cause, it should pay the bill to 
restore the individual to health. As it is now the producer 
when sick must lose his income, suffer the pains of disease 
and pay the bill of restoring himself that he may again 
become of value to society. This is evidently an injustice 
that detracts greatly from the word civilized and places 
us almost in the class of savagery. 

Therefore at the School Town the Doctor will be placed 
in the scientific attitude toward his patients to treat them 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



with the single aim of getting them well in the least time, 
regardless of any fee or favor and free from temptation 
to deceive, defraud or practice any trickery to increase his 
income. He will thus be able to nip disease in the bud 
and prevent both loss of time and life. 

To aid in keeping the community in health, a hospital 
will be built and maintained at the expense of the whole 
community, and at this hospital all will receive full med- 
ical attention alike free of any charge. 

DISCIPLINE 

As has already been gathered, the Discipline will be in 
the hands of the Student-Government machinery consist- 
ing of a one-house legislative body. City Officials, a Court 
and Police Department ; and all infractions of the law will 
be adjusted by the English system of court procedure 
which is both swift and just as well as inexpensive. 

A student being under his own rule will have a greater 
respect for it than he would for any adult-made law. And 
respect always brings obedience to law. If he breaks the 
law, he knows that he will be dealt with by his peers and 
that justice will be meted out to him. Instructors will 
thus be relieved of all responsibility for the conduct of 
student-citizens and hence the attitude of teacher to stu- 
dent will be one of fellowship and equality. Thus there 
will be nothing to repress aspiration or spontaneity or to 
restrict freedom. This does not mean that there will be 
a looseness to the conduct of students, but quite the oppo- 
site ; for having the responsibility upon their own shoul- 
dersi they -Avill feel that they have their owai interests at 
stake and that rude conduct or destruction of property or 
inattention to duties would all detract from the general 
efficiency of the school by which they would all be losers, 
Self-riile also brings out honor and the highest type of 
public spirit, which are better than rules to popularize 
right conduct and those higher relations and amenities of 
a refined society. 

78 



WITHOUT TAXATION 



THE ALTOGETHER ERA DAWNING 

During these awful years of a world war, mankind has 
come out of the travail of a marvelous rebirth, the ends 
of the earth have been brot together and every civilized 
people the world around is anxiously looking forward for 
those organic changes and adjustments that will give them 
the fullness of life and the common enjoyment of the heri- 
tage of the past. The whole earth seems to have come out 
of the womb of a new destiny, and that destiny is to give 
to every human being an assured opportunity to reap the 
full reward of his labor and to develop his mind faculties 
to his full content ; a destiny of a generous reconstruction 
and restoration that the weak may be protected against 
the aggressions of the strong; a destiny that will place 
human life and human happiness before the traditional 
rights of property ; a destiny that will simplify, national- 
ize and internationalize law and give to all men a true 
voice in how they shall be governed ; a destiny that shall 
not only declare that all men are brothers, but shall also 
enact and enforce the declaration into just law and order 
so that each one shall receive the fullness and abundance 
of the earth. 

Over the hills of human woe and injustice the blazing 
sun of expectancy is rising, and men as never before are 
searching earnestly for Truth that they may be led into 
just relationships so that peace and plenty may become 
universal and lasting. And because the general funda- 
mental knowledge needed to discover and interpret Truth 
and to lay the foundations for a social superstructure that 
will perpetuate itself, is in possession of the minds of but 
a small number of mankind, great are the responsibilities 
that now^ rest upon them and all the greater will be the 
brilliance of their achievements if they can so construct 
and teach that the fulfillment of this world expectancy 
can be fully realized. 

And inasmuch as right thot begets right action and 
ignorance is the cringing slave of greed, it behooves this 

79 



NATURAL EDUCATION 



generation to begin at the bottom and build an Educa- 
tional Structure which in all its foundation stones will be 
found the power of constructive freedom based upon the 
just and everlasting laws of a bountiful universe. No time, 
therefore, is more opportune than NOW to institute a sup- 
plemental educational system that will harmonize with the 
present demands of industry and will respond to the 
world-wide yearnings for liberation and achievement now 
dominating the mind of the civilized world. 







.■;■■'. v*v--/i ••■■.•J 




, ■.■,''. v?"-V '^^'^^-'^■- '■ ■■' ' '■■• 
^ . . |;B'l$^:;Sf'^J ;. 




